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Editor’s note: For Hawaii’s Nov. 5 General Election, Civil Beat asked candidates to answer some questions about where they stand on various issues and what their priorities will be if elected.

The following came from Jeanne Kapela, Democratic candidate for state House District 5, which covers portions of Keaau and Kurtistown, Mountain View, Glenwood, Fern Forest, Volcano, Pahala, Punaluu, Naalehu, Waiohinu, Hawaiian Ocean View and Hookena. Her opponents are Republican Ashley Oyama and Libertarian Fred Fogel.

Go to Civil Beat’s Election Guide for general information, and check out other candidates on the General Election Ballot.

1. What is the biggest issue facing your district, and what would you do about it?

The district I represent is the most rural, remote and high-poverty district in the state. It lacks basic infrastructure compared to more urban areas. Parts of my district even lack access to running water. Thus, the most pressing issue in my community is Hawaii’s exorbitantly high cost of living.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s most recent Out of Reach report, a minimum wage employee must work 107 hours per week to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment in the islands. We need to link our state’s minimum wage to the cost-of-living index, so that future minimum wage hikes are not derailed by politics.

Additionally, we must establish paid sick and family leave for all workers. It is unconscionable that workers must choose between their health and their paychecks when emergencies occur. Studies show that the annual cost to cover 16 weeks of family leave for an employee earning $48,000 per year would be roughly $58 annually, a little over $1 per week for invaluable financial security. 

Finally, we need to build truly affordable housing for those earning no more than 60% of area median income, rather than projects that pad developers’ bank accounts.   

2. How do you feel about the massive income tax cut just approved by the Legislature and the governor? Do you have any concerns that it will force reductions in state services in the years to come?

I am a strong champion for tax fairness proposals that benefit economically disadvantaged households and working families. To that end, I support the provisions of House Bill 2404 that strengthen the standard deduction, which provide an equal benefit for people of all economic levels and income quintiles.

That said, I am deeply troubled by the bill’s enactment of income tax cuts for the rich. According to analysis performed by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the income tax cuts for those earning more than $150,000 per year will result in an estimated $271 million revenue loss for our state by 2025, a figure that rises to $590 million by 2027.

That is a devastating loss of revenue that only worsens income inequality for Hawaii. In my view, we should increase taxes on our state’s wealthiest residents by closing the state’s capital gains loophole and increasing conveyance taxes.

Instead of decreasing taxes for affluent households, the revenue we are losing through HB 2404 would be better spent increasing funding for public schools, establishing family leave, building truly affordable housing, strengthening climate resilience and expanding access to quality health care for vulnerable families.

3. Hawaii continues to struggle with pay-to-play politics and corruption in government. What meaningful reforms do you think would change state government for the better?

To begin, we should institute a clean elections program for Hawaii that prevents wealthy campaign donors from controlling our elections and political processes. Additionally, we need to close loopholes in our campaign financing laws that allow subcontractors and their relatives to circumvent anti-corruption regulations.

I also believe we should increase funding for both the Campaign Spending Commission and the Ethics Commission, both of which have received few additional resources since their creation.

Finally, I am working to make our State Capitol more welcoming to working families by launching child-care services at the legislature. This will empower working parents to obtain quality care for their keiki while they participate in the legislative process in a meaningful way, which will ultimately make our political system more responsive to the needs and concerns of working families.

4. Candidates often say they will support reform proposals in the Legislature. And yet major reform proposals don’t pass. Will you back good-government proposals even if it means going against leadership? If you are an incumbent, can you point to an example of a reform that you supported?

I am proud to support fundamental reform proposals that promote the public trust. Before the 2024 legislative session, I advocated for several internal reforms to the legislative process, including making the budget process more transparent, ending the practice of referring nonfiscal bills to the Finance Committee, establishing standards of conduct for legislators on social media and limiting the number of years an individual legislator can chair a single committee.

I will continue to steadfastly fight for reforms to our legislative process that uplift the people’s voice in determining political outcomes.

5. Do you support comprehensive public financing of elections for candidates who choose to participate? Why or why not?

I am one of the strongest champions of comprehensive public financing in the state House. In each of the last two years, I have had the privilege of speaking at public events about the importance of establishing a so-called “clean elections” program for our state. Too often, our political processes are controlled by wealthy donors, who are often the same corporations and individuals who historically benefited from the colonization of Hawaii.

Passing a clean elections program is not just essential for reclaiming our campaign system for the public interest. It is an essential step in rectifying the suppression of Native Hawaiians and the working class that resulted from the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

6. Hawaii is the only Western state without a statewide citizens initiative process. Do you support such a process? Why or why not?

Before we enact a statewide citizens initiative process, we should pass significant reforms to our campaign spending system. In other states, wealthy corporations and rich political donors have used dark money to manipulate citizens’ initiatives and undermine the public trust. We cannot allow that to happen in the islands.

We need to strengthen our commitment to preserving the public trust, which includes regulating the special interests that corrupt our political system.

7. Thanks to their campaign war chests and name familiarity, incumbents are almost always reelected in Hawaii legislative races. Should there be term limits for state legislators, as there are for the governor’s office and county councils? Why or why not?

I don’t believe that term limits for state legislators will necessarily lead to better governmental outcomes. At the state Legislature, policymakers are tasked with addressing thousands of issues and making decisions that impact our entire island chain. It often takes years for policy ideas to move forward.

Moreover, policymakers often need time to become familiar with complex policy items, like the state budget. It is important that we retain the institutional memory of elected officials who genuinely support the public’s interest.

Instead of implementing term limits, we should pass proposals to remove corporate influence and dark money from politics. I support strengthening our state’s public funding program for candidates who agree to limits on private campaign contributions.

I also believe that we should enact commonsense campaign finance regulations, like ending the practice of bundling that allows candidates and political action committees to subvert the spirit of campaign finance laws by combining individual campaign contributions into one large contribution. That’s a practice that we should immediately ban.

8. What will you do to ensure accountability at the Legislature? Do you support ideas such as requiring the Sunshine Law to apply to the Legislature or banning campaign contributions during session?

Integrity is essential to good government. I support banning the solicitation of campaign contributions during the legislative session. We must also end the practice of allowing campaign contributions to be bundled together, which undermines our efforts to enforce campaign spending limits and invites corruption into our political process. Furthermore, we should strengthen ethics laws that prevent public officials from making decisions on issues that directly impact their personal financial interests.

Finally, we should explore the idea of having a year-round legislative session, which will allow more time for a thoughtful exchange of ideas and eliminate the timing constraints that prevent the implementation of greater transparency provisions, like applying the Sunshine Law to the Legislature.

9. How would you make the Legislature more transparent and accessible to the public? Opening conference committees to the public? Stricter disclosure requirements on lobbying and lobbyists? How could the Legislature change its own internal rules to be more open?

I supported making legislative allowance expenditures public, so that people can see how legislators are using the tax dollars with which they are provided to carry out their legislative responsibilities. I was excited to see this change instituted this year.

We must also take conflict of interest decisions out of the hands of individual legislators. Instead, we should empower the Ethics Commission to make recommendations about potential conflicts of interest after bills are filed, with those recommendations being made available for public review. The Ethics Commission has access to legislators’ financial disclosures and is well positioned to determine when acting on a proposal might provide an unfair financial benefit to a lawmaker.

Finally, we should require registered lobbyists to disclose exactly what pieces of legislation — including budget items and capital improvement projects — they are lobbying for or against, so that the public has clear information about who is influencing our government.

10. Many people have talked about diversifying the local economy for many years now, and yet Hawaii is still heavily reliant on tourism. What, if anything, should be done differently about tourism and the economy?

Diversification is critical to the long-term health of Hawaii’s economy. We cannot continue to rely on an unsustainable model of tourism and we cannot continue to allow unchecked numbers of tourists to flood our shores at the expense of residents and our aina.

I support the establishment of green fees for visitors to the islands, which can be used to increase funding for Hawaii’s conservation and sustainability programs. New Zealand, the Galapagos Islands, the Maldives, Cancun and Venice all have green fee programs for visitors ranging from $1 to $100. New Zealand spends $188 per tourist on environmental programs. Hawaii spends just $9 per tourist. We need to catch up.

Additionally, we need to seriously consider reinstating carrying capacity limits for each island to prevent our visitor industry from damaging our communities and our environment. Finally, we should establish an economic diversification task force to create a plan to diversify our economy through sustainable industries, like regenerative agriculture and clean energy. This would create a strategic framework to guide state policy, as is the case with our state’s sustainability plan.

11. An estimated 60% of Hawaii residents are struggling to get by, a problem that reaches far beyond low-income and into the middle class, which is disappearing. What ideas do you have to help the middle class and working families who are finding it hard to continue to live here?

We need to put people’s needs before corporate greed. We can make Hawaii more affordable by investing in truly affordable housing. Instead of giving tax breaks to developers, we should fund housing projects that are overseen by nonprofit organizations, which are not driven by shareholder profits.

I believe that we need to establish paid family and sick leave programs for all workers. No one should have to choose between earning their paychecks and protecting their health. Moreover, we must deliver tax fairness for working families. We should raise the food and renters’ credits for low-income households and create a state child tax credit, which we can pay for by closing corporate tax loopholes and increasing capital gains taxes for the wealthy.

Health care continues to be expensive and access restricted across all economic demographics, especially on the neighbor islands. We need to create a state program to eliminate medical debt for residents, so that the cost of medical care doesn’t become a longstanding financial burden.

Finally, we should support working parents by continuing to fund universal child care and preschool programs. Child care costs over $13,000 per year in Hawaii on average. We must make it more attainable for everyday residents.