Case Re-Introduces Bills to Attack Key Driver of Hawai’i’s High Cost of Living

His proposals would amend the century-old Jones Act to combat monopolies in domestic shipping

(Honolulu, HI) – Congressman Ed Case (HI-01) re-introduced three bills in Congress to reform the century-old Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (commonly referred to as the “Jones Act”), which is widely credited with artificially inflating the cost of shipping goods to Hawai’i.

“These three bills are meant to end a century of monopolistic closed market domestic cargo shipping to and from my isolated home state of Hawai‘i as well as the other island and separated jurisdictions of our country that lie outside the continental United States,” said Case.

“The bills aim directly at one of the key drivers of our astronomically high cost of living in Hawai‘i and other similarly located jurisdictions.”

Case continued: “Because the Jones Act severely limits the supply of shipping to and from our communities, it has allowed a very few companies to control our very lifeline to the outside world and as a result command shipping rates way higher than the rest of the world.

“The Jones Act mandates that all cargo shipping between U.S. ports occur exclusively on U.S., not foreign, flagged vessels. Additionally, the law requires that these vessels are built in the U.S. and owned and crewed by U.S. citizens. Because Jones Act shipping has shrunken and international shipping has increased dramatically, especially in the last quarter-century, the Jones Act results in a very few carriers serving all domestic shipping needs.

“And those few U.S. flag cargo lines that remain have maneuvered the Jones Act to develop virtual monopolies over domestic cargo shipping to, from and within our most isolated and exposed locales – our island and offshore states and territories – that have no alternative modes of transportation such as trucking or rail.

“Hawai‘i is a classic example. Located almost 2,500 miles off the West Coast, we import well over 90 percent of our life necessities by ocean cargo. There are plenty of international cargo lines who could and would compete for a share of that market. Yet only two U.S. flag domestic cargo lines—Matson Navigation and Pasha Hawai‘i—operate a virtual duopoly over our lifeline.

‘While they are nominally subject to federal regulation, the fact of the matter is that cargo prices have gone in only one direction–up, fast and repeatedly, despite a surplus of international shipping–and it is indisputable that there is no downward market pressure which would otherwise result from meaningful competition.

“These accelerating cargo prices are not absorbed by the shipping lines, but passed through all the way down the chain, to the transporters, wholesalers, retailers, small businesses, mom-n-pops and ultimately consumers, of all of the elementals of life, from food to medical supplies, clothes, housing and virtually all other goods.”

“More broadly, there is much evidence about the direct impact of the Jones Act on shipping prices to noncontiguous areas. At a basic level, the everyday goods that we rely on in Hawai‘i cost much more than on the Mainland, a difference which largely cannot be attributed to anything other than shipping costs,” said Case.

Last year, the Grassroot Institute of Hawai‘i published a thorough and first-of-it-kind report, “Quantifying the Cost of the Jones Act to Hawai‘i.” The report found that:

  • The median annual cost of the Jones Act to the Hawai‘i economy is $1.2 billion.
  • The annual cost of shipping to Hawai‘i is estimated to be $654 million higher and prices $916 million higher.
  • The Jones Act annually costs each Hawai‘i resident more than $645.
  • Thanks to the Jones Act, Hawai‘i has approximately 9,100 fewer jobs, representing $404 million in wages.
  • Hawai‘i families across all income groups would benefit from Jones Act reform. In the absence of Jones Act restrictions, those making between $15,000 and $70,000 annually would see an annual across-the-board economic benefit ranging from $78 million to $154 million.
  • Annual tax revenues would be $148.2 million higher.
  • Focusing solely on the Jones Act requirement that vessels be built in the United States, they found that the build provision results in a 1.2% shipping cost increase for Hawaii. This translates annually to an added cost of $531.7 million to the state’s economy, or about $296 per resident.
  • It also means a loss of 3,860 jobs, and $30.8 million less in state and local tax revenues.

Case’s three measures and their proposed amendments to the Jones Act are:

  • the Noncontiguous Shipping Relief Act, which exempts all noncontiguous U.S. locations, including Hawai‘i, from the Jones Act;
  • the Noncontiguous Shipping Reasonable Rate Act, which benchmarks the definition of a “reasonable rate” which domestic shippers can charge as no more than ten percent above international shipping rates for comparable routes; and
  • the Noncontiguous Shipping Competition Act, which rescinds the Jones Act wherever monopolies or duopolies in noncontiguous Jones Act shipping develop.

“These long-overdue bills are of the utmost importance to the unique localities which have been left undefended to bear the brunt of the Jones Act. It is often difficult to pierce the veil of longstanding custom and understanding to see the real negative impacts of a law and what should instead be. It is even more difficult to change a law which provides a federally created and endorsed monopoly under which no competition exists to hold down prices. Yet clearly the time for these measures is overdue.”

Farm workers still don’t get paid for overtime in most places: “This is the very definition of structural racism”

The Counter
by H. Claire Brown –

Experts say a policy change is both fair and feasible. When will it happen?

Last year, New York joined a handful of other states, including California, Minnesota, Hawaii, Washington, and Maryland in granting overtime pay to farm workers. Yet as the law took effect on January 1, 2020, there was already a hitch: Workers would only receive time-and-a-half pay after they had already worked a 60-hour week, 20 hours higher than the threshold that governs virtually all other categories of employees in the United States.

At the end of 2020, a state board convened to consider lowering the threshold to 40 hours. The three-person panel, comprised of a former union leader, the president of the pro-business New York Farm Bureau, and a member appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, decided to keep the threshold at 60 hours this year, citing pandemic-related uncertainty and rejecting a counter-proposal brought by former union leader Denis Hughes to gradually lower it over the next decade, according to Politico Pro. The board announced it will reconsider the threshold in November at the earliest.

“The wage board, in my opinion, was derelict in its duty to protect workers, Covid or not Covid,” said Lisa Zucker, legislative attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union. “No other businesses got to say, ‘oh my gosh, it’s Covid, I’m barely surviving—so please, New York, exclude me from paying overtime.’”

The wage board’s decision marks the most recent setback in a decades-long campaign by activists and labor advocates to secure basic protections for farm workers in the state, but it’s also indicative of a long-term dynamic nationwide: Farm workers were excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) back in 1938, the result of a political compromise to secure the votes of Southern Democrats who represented farmers who relied on cheap Black labor. Decades later, the vast majority of states have still not extended overtime pay to farm workers.

Now, for the first time in years, it seems possible that efforts to reverse the Depression-era carveout might gain political traction at the federal level. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has twice introduced legislation, dubbed the Fairness for Farm Workers Act, which would mandate overtime for farm workers and end a handful of additional minimum-wage and overtime exemptions. Her home state of California passed overtime pay for farm workers in 2016. Its plan involves gradually reducing the hourly threshold by five hours per year until it hits 40 hours in 2022. President-elect Joe Biden endorsed the policy during his campaign.

The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act established several of the workplace protections that continue to define work in the U.S. today: The minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, a ban on child labor. The bill faced intense opposition from Southern senators who had long relied on “a fully exploitable black population to provide cheap labor,” writes Juan F. Perea of Loyola University Chicago in his 2011 paper “Echoes of Slavery: Recognizing the Racist Origins of the Agricultural and Domestic Worker Exclusion from the National Labor Relations Act.” Arguing against the bill, Senator “Cotton” Ed Smith of South Carolina said that “any man on this floor who has sense enough to read the English language knows that the main object of this bill is, by human legislation, to overcome the splendid gifts of God to the South.”

In 1938, farm workers were excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act as a result of a political compromise, relying on cheap Black labor. Decades later, the majority of states have still not extended overtime pay to farm workers.

According to Perea, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initially intended to include all workers in the bill. His administration only agreed to exclude farm workers and domestic workers from the legislation when it became clear that the bill would not pass without Southern support. “Congress acquiesced in, and in effect endorsed, Southern racism by making a Faustian pact to exclude black employees by proxy to enable the passage of New Deal legislation,” Perea wrote.

Migrant workers harvest Letttuce at Lakeside Organic Gardens in Watsonville, CA on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013.Bob Nichols/USDA
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has twice introduced legislation, dubbed the Fairness for Farm Workers Act, which would mandate overtime for farm workers and end a handful of additional minimum-wage and overtime exemptions.

“This is the very definition of structural racism,” Zucker said, adding that while the demographics of farm workers have changed since the 1930s, the labor dynamics have not. “Generations of farmers have built their business plan on the underpayment of workers,” she said. Farm workers were finally granted minimum wage protections in 1966, and domestic workers now receive both minimum wage and overtime pay, with some exceptions.

More than 80 years have elapsed since the passage of New Deal legislation, but many of the arguments made by opponents of the FLSA are relevant today. A quote in Perea’s paper from Fred Brenckman, a Washington Representative of the National Grange, neatly summarizes the crux of today’s most prevalent argument against extending labor protections to farm workers: “If farm labor is poorly paid in the United States today, then it can be said with emphasis that the farmer and his family are still more poorly paid.”

Farm groups have long claimed that paying overtime is not feasible. They say that farm work is not like an office job—it can require intense effort in key harvest months, and very little during the winter. Further, tight profit margins in the food industry make it difficult to absorb added labor costs. In New York, farm groups hoping to maintain the 60-hour minimum wage threshold have warned that paying overtime would lead to the replacement of apple orchards with easy-to-harvest crops and the replacement of dairy workers with robotic milking machines. Worst of all, they say, the new regulations would force them to raise prices, ceding a competitive edge to growers in other states.

Despite the blustery rhetoric, the numbers tell a different story. Dr. Jeanette Wicks-Lim, associate research professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute, recently conducted a cost-benefit analysis of extending overtime pay to all farm workers in the state. She found that overtime pay would increase labor costs by just 5 percent, representing an increase of just 2 percent of overall farm revenue.

At the same time, the bump would mean a lot to farm workers, who would see a wage increase of about 17 percent in weeks where they work overtime. “Among farm worker households, their levels of poverty are about double the average worker in the state. So there’s clearly a need to raise the labor standards of these workers who are doing what we are all recognizing as ‘essential work,’” she says.

Furthermore, farm labor costs in Massachusetts are relatively high. Wicks-Lim says the impact on farmers’ bottom line would likely be even lower in other states.

“Among farm worker households, their levels of poverty are about double the average worker in the state. So there’s clearly a need to raise the labor standards of these workers who are doing what we are all recognizing as ‘essential work.’”

So: Can farmers afford to pay their workers more? Wicks-Lim cautions that the word “afford” will be hotly disputed. Yet she has also done research on the minimum wage, and she says businesses have found ways to absorb similar increases in labor costs by shifting wage distribution, increasing prices, and slightly reducing profits. “What I’ve seen in the policy debates is any labor cost increase is considered to be too big. And that’s just not true in the way businesses operate,” she says. “The question really is: ‘What is the actual cost increase relative to their revenue? What are the adjustment mechanisms available to them?’” Consumers may be more amenable to paying a few more cents for a bushel of apples knowing that the farmworkers who picked them are being paid overtime. Or they may not notice the change: Food prices have already increased by more than 3 percent since the start of the pandemic.

Overtime for farm workers might be fair and feasible, but it remains to be seen whether Congress will make it happen. With Democratic control of the Senate, legislation may have a greater chance of passing at the federal level than at any point in the past decade. Yet Zucker predicts it’ll be an uphill battle. “We see this microcosm of it in New York, that senators from big ag states worry that they won’t get re-elected. That’s exactly the pressure we faced when we were trying to pass the initial Farm Labor Practices Act [of New York] in 2019. Agricultural workers and allies and advocates worked on that bill for 20 years,” she said. Zucker sees a similar dynamic playing out nationwide, with farm-state Democrats potentially siding with Republicans to oppose an overtime expansion.

“Senators from all those big ag states will say, ‘I can’t vote for this, the Farm Bureau is going to come and—they’re going to kill me,” she said.

Rep. Ed Case’s bills take aim at reforming Jones Act

Star-Advertiser

U.S. Rep. Ed Case of Hawaii said today he has reintroduced three bills in Congress to reform the Jones Act, which many critics say is responsible for artificially inflating the cost of shipping goods to the state.

“These three bills are meant to end a century of monopolistic closed market domestic cargo shipping to and from my isolated home state of Hawai‘i as well as the other island and separated jurisdictions of our country that lie outside the continental United States,” Case said. “The bills aim directly at one of the key drivers of our astronomically high cost of living in Hawai‘i and other similarly located jurisdictions.”

Case said because the Jones Act severely limits the supply of shipping to and from Hawaii’s communities, it has allowed a few companies to control the state’s lifeline to the outside world and, as a result, “command shipping rates way higher than the rest of the world.”

The 1920 Jones Act requires all cargo moved between two U.S. ports to be carried by vessels that are built in the country, owned by a U.S. entity and manned by an American crew.

Auditor: State Agriculture Agency Is Failing To Fulfill Mission

Civil Beat
By Stewart Yerton

After 25 years, the Agribusiness Development Corp. hasn’t helped Hawaii re-fashion former sugar and pineapple plantations into viable economic engines, audit says.

The state agency set up to help convert Hawaii’s agriculture lands from plantations producing mainly pineapple and sugar for export to more economically viable farms growing a variety of crops has failed in its mission, an audit released Thursday found.

The assessment of the Hawaii Agribusiness Development Corp. comes at what some see as a critical time for the state’s tourism- and military-dependent economy as the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to diversify.

The corporation was set up more than 25 years ago to help do that by reinvigorating Hawaii’s agriculture industry, which had once been a pillar for jobs and income.

However, the Hawaii State Auditor said that has not been happening.

In a characteristically scathing assessment, the auditor found that neither the corporation nor its board even know what the state agency’s duties are. Even basic duties, like creating a plan required by law, have been ignored, according to the audit.

“ADC has not become the entity the Legislature envisioned – one that would develop an agriculture industry to stand as a pillar of the state economy, alongside tourism and the military,” the audit said. “After nearly 30 years, the economic void created when plantations ceased production remains mostly unfilled.”

Along with its ambitious mission, the corporation has broad powers, including the ability to buy and hold land and water resources, and to conduct market research.

In recent years, the Legislature has appropriated more than a quarter of $1 billion to the ADC, including about $23.4 million for operations and $238 million for capital investments. But it has been difficult at times for lawmakers to determine where that money had gone and how well the corporation had been fulfilling its duties.

As Civil Beat reported in April 2018, some lawmakers were upset that the ADC at that time had not even been submitting annual reports to the Legislature as required by its enabling statute.

When lawmakers at the time called for an audit, the agency’s executive director, Jimmy Nakatani, told lawmakers he was too busy for such scrutiny. Scott Enright, the then-state Department of Agriculture chair, also resisted the audit on grounds that ADC personnel were too busy.

But, the audit found, whatever else Nakatani was doing to make an audit too onerous, it did not appear he was running a tight ship.

Records Are In Disarray Or Do Not Exist
“We had difficulty pinpointing exactly why ADC struggles with managing the lands it has acquired since 2012, in part because the corporation’s record keeping and filing system are in disarray,” the audit reported.

“Documents were piled under desks and kept wherever space allowed. Staff hastily assembled tenant files after we requested them, but the files they provided were disorganized and often missing important documents, such as board approvals, license agreements, and proof of insurance,” it added.

Documents essential to day-to-day operations of a corporation that manages land and properties, like inventories of land holdings and tenant listings, didn’t exist, the auditor found.

The auditor also found the agency has not produced a legally required plan “that would define and establish the goals, objectives, policies, and priority guidelines for the corporation’s agribusiness development strategy.”

The reason, according to the auditor: “The executive director thinks such a plan is unnecessary: ‘I have everything up here,’ he said, pointing to his head.”

In the corporation’s response, published as part of the audit, Nakatani defended the agency, saying that some purported problems were irrelevant. While Nakatani admitted the agency doesn’t have the plan required by law, he said that doesn’t prevent the corporation from making good deals when buying land.

He also said it is an enormously difficult task to transform Hawaii’s agriculture sector.

“Transitioning former pineapple and sugar lands into diversified uses is not simply a matter of digging up pineapple plants and putting lettuce in its place,” he wrote.

Crop Block Grant Program accepting applications

West Hawaii Today

The state Department of Agriculture Market Development Branch is now accepting grant proposals under the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (SCBGP) for fiscal year 2021. This block grant program under the U.S. Department of Agriculture is administered through the state and aims to strengthen markets and expand economic opportunities for local and regional farmers and producers. Specialty crops include fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture, and nursery (floriculture) crops.

The grant program is open to nonprofit organizations, local, state, and federal government entities, for-profit organizations, universities and individuals for projects that enhance the competitiveness of specialty crops. To be eligible to participate, applicants must reside in or their business or educational affiliation must be registered in Hawaii.

To be eligible for a grant, projects must enhance the competitiveness of Hawaii-grown specialty crops in either the domestic or foreign markets. Preference will be given to projects that measurably increase the production and/or consumption of specialty crops, foster the development of fledging crops and organic operations for Hawaii specialty crop farmers.

Proposals in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 per project will be considered with higher amounts considered for projects with extraordinary statewide benefit or exceptional merit and benefit to the specialty crop industry. Projects shall be completed within 24 months. Matching funds, either in-kind or cash, are not required, however, applicants are encouraged to provide evidence of matching funds, either in-kind or cash, which will be calculated into the scoring criteria. Letters of support from project partners and supporters describing their commitment as a partner or their level of support are encouraged.

The closing date for proposals is noon Feb. 12. For more information and to submit a proposal, visit https://hands.ehawaii.gov/hands.

30 Years Without a Plan — Auditor Rips Agribusiness Development Corp.

Hawaii Free Press

Audit of the Agribusiness Development Corporation

Auditor’s Summary — Report No. 21-01 –

From Hawaii State Auditor, January 14, 2021 –

More than 25 years after its creation, we found an agency that is generally unaware of its unique powers and exemptions, and has done little – if anything – toward achieving its statutory purpose. From 1994 to 2012, the corporation managed two former plantation water systems on Kaua‘i and one on O‘ahu, supplying water to farmers but doing little else to develop new international, national, and local markets for Hawai‘i-grown products, to promote diversified agriculture across the state, or to develop an agriculture industry to replace the economic loss caused by the closure of the plantations.

THE HAWAI‘I STATE LEGISLATURE created the Agribusiness Development Corporation (ADC) in 1994 amidst a series of sugar and pineapple plantation closures that lawmakers viewed as “an unprecedented opportunity for the conversion of agriculture into a dynamic growth industry.” Projecting that the downsizing of sugar and pineapple production would free up 75,000 acres of agricultural land and 50 million gallons of water daily over the next decade, the Legislature established ADC as a public corporation tasked with developing an “aggressive and dynamic” agribusiness development program to convert former plantation assets for use by new large-scale commercial enterprises producing the majority of their crops for export.

What we found

We found that ADC has done little – if anything – to facilitate the development of agricultural enterprises to replace the economic loss created by the demise of the sugar and pineapple industries. After almost 30 years, ADC has yet to develop an agribusiness plan – a plan required by statute – to define and establish goals, objectives, policies, and priority guidelines for its agribusiness development strategy or other short- and long-range strategic plans.

Instead of leading the State’s agricultural transformation, ADC primarily manages 4,257 acres of land it started acquiring in 2012 at the direction of the Legislature as well as the Waiāhole Water System on O‘ahu. Yet, we found that the corporation struggles to manage its lands, challenged by the myriad duties required for effective land management. For instance, a preferred anchor tenant had occupied ADC land for years without a formal, written agreement. We saw evidence of the tenant’s farming activity during an October 2019 site visit, roughly two weeks before ADC finally executed a license agreement with terms retroactive to 2016. That tenant also had provided services in exchange for rent credits, building reservoirs and paving roads used by other ADC tenants. But, ADC did not follow the state procurement process when authorizing the work nor did it document, monitor, or track the services, labor, or materials the tenant provided. In fact, the Executive Director acknowledged that ADC had opted to take the tenant’s “word” on the services provided, the costs incurred, and the materials used.

Finally, we found that ADC’s Board of Directors, as the head of the corporation, has provided minimal guidance and oversight of ADC’s operations. Rather than taking an active role in developing agribusiness policies, establishing short- and long-term strategic plans, and charting the corporation’s direction, the Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson believe that the Board’s responsibility is to address whatever business is brought before it by the Executive Director. And, as a result of the Board’s abdication of its policy-making and oversight responsibilities, ADC has yet to provide the necessary leadership to facilitate the transition of agricultural lands and infrastructure from plantation operations into other agricultural enterprises that it was intended to provide after almost 30 years since its creation.

Why did these problems occur?

ADC – both its Board of Directors and its staff – does not understand the corporation’s overarching purpose, a mission that has remained unchanged since its creation in 1994 and is clearly stated in statute: ADC was established “as a public corporation to administer an aggressive and dynamic agribusiness development program” to replace the economic loss caused by the closure of Hawai‘i’s sugar and pineapple plantations. The Legislature intended the corporation “to facilitate the transition of agricultural infrastructure from plantation operations into other agricultural enterprises, to carry on the marketing analysis to direct agricultural industry evolution, and to provide leadership for the development, financing, improvement, or enhancement of agricultural enterprises.” And, ADC was granted powers and exemptions unique in Hawai‘i state government that afford the corporation unrivaled flexibility to bring former plantation lands back into production “in a timely manner.” However, as with its primary statutory mission, the corporation is generally unaware of those powers and how they can be used to develop a diversified agriculture industry for Hawai‘i.

ADC has failed to prepare a Hawai‘i agribusiness plan – which is required under Chapter 163D, Hawai‘i Revised Statutes – that would define and establish the goals, objectives, policies, and priority guidelines for the corporation’s agribusiness development strategy. The Executive Director thinks such a plan is unnecessary: “I have everything up here,” he said, pointing to his head. In lieu of a written strategic plan, short-term or long-term, ADC gave us a “project matrix” that looked like a to-do list of 85 tasks ranging from lawn mowing to acquiring property.

Limited participation from ADC’s Board of Directors compounds the corporation’s challenges. Board members receive no orientation or training and offer ADC’s management and staff little meaningful oversight or direction, primarily considering matters that the Executive Director chooses to bring before them or getting involved in day-to-day staff-level work. The Board has not set goals or performance measures for the Executive Director to fulfill and has not held him accountable for neglecting statutory requirements such as preparing the agribusiness plan or conducting market research.

We had difficulty pinpointing exactly why ADC struggles with managing the lands it has acquired since 2012, in part because the corporation’s recordkeeping and filing system are in disarray. Documents were piled under desks and kept wherever space allowed. Staff hastily assembled tenant files after we requested them, but the files they provided were disorganized and often missing important documents, such as board approvals, license agreements, and proof of insurance. When we requested documents we believed would be essential to the day-to-day operations of a corporation that manages land and properties – such things as land management policies, land acquisition guidelines, inventories of land holdings, tenant listings, and rent rolls – we were informed that the requested materials did not exist and would need to be assembled. ADC could not provide us with even baseline metrics of its land holdings and its management of those resources because they do not collect, track, and document such data. We had to create our own inventory of ADC’s lands and licenses issued for portions of larger parcels during the audit.

ADC also has not developed documented policies and procedures to guide its operations, which precluded us from assessing which, if any, part of a process may have failed. When we asked to review the corporation’s acquisition process, staff came up with a 10-step process on the spot, although, in practice, each of ADC’s purchases has been directed by the Legislature. The Executive Director told us that documented guidance would be “good to have” but he does not want to “get stuck with something in writing.” But operating without documentation, a formal plan or strategy, or board oversight, has resulted in a corporation that lacks a clear sense of direction and accountability.

Why do these problems matter?

The Legislature recognized the demise of Hawai‘i’s sugar and pineapple industry would create a significant loss to the state economy and had the foresight to identify the need for “aggressive and dynamic leadership” to develop an agricultural industry to fill that economic void. ADC was created to provide that leadership, to facilitate the development of Hawai‘i-based agricultural enterprises whose products are primarily for export, and to assist Hawai‘i-based agricultural enterprises with marketing and promotional strategies to exploit local, national, and international markets. ADC has not become the entity the Legislature envisioned – one that would develop an agriculture industry to stand as a pillar of the state economy, alongside tourism and the military. After nearly 30 years, the economic void created when plantations ceased production remains mostly unfilled.

The current pandemic has highlighted the necessity of having a diverse and well-balanced economy during difficult times. The spread of COVID-19 caused the State to restrict travel to Hawai‘i, virtually shuttering the tourism industry and disrupting the State’s economy. Large-scale agricultural enterprises whose crop productions are primarily for export would likely have lessened the economic blow while providing the State with greater food self-sustainability. The high cost the State has paid for ADC’s past inaction and its continued lack of direction, focus, and competence is immeasurable; the missed opportunities are unknowable. However, what is clear is that the State can no longer wait for ADC to figure out what it is, what it is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it.

READ: Full Report or Summary

Flashback Dec 19, 2019: State Agribusiness Dev Corp land a haven for criminal activity for years—ADC Spokesman: “We don’t want to do a sweep”

CB: Auditor: State Agriculture Agency Is Failing To Fulfill Mission