Summary and Timestamped Transcript Below
In this insightful interview, Dan Johnson, a candidate running for District 12 of the Maui State House, shares his vision and priorities centered around tackling Maui’s escalating cost of living, housing affordability, sustainability, and local economic empowerment. Born and raised on Maui with deep family roots, Dan highlights the crisis of local residents being priced out of their communities due to soaring housing costs driven by external investments and market pressures. An experienced project manager with a background in finance and renewable energy, Dan advocates for pragmatic, fiscally conservative solutions that prioritize Maui’s residents while balancing business interests.
Dan proposes innovative legislative measures such as removing capital gains tax on home sales to local owner-occupants to encourage local ownership and stabilize housing prices. He stresses the importance of sustainable living, supporting renewable energy, and improving agricultural infrastructure to reduce dependence on costly imports and create local economic resilience. Dan is critical of large-scale projects like Honolulu’s rail system that do not benefit Maui and emphasizes the need for state government to focus on essential services while cutting waste and inefficiencies.
Personal freedom and civil liberties, especially in light of recent pandemic mandates, are key issues for Dan, who supports limiting executive emergency powers and ensuring government accountability. He also addresses homelessness as a multifaceted problem requiring coordinated state and county efforts and sustainable housing solutions.
Throughout the dialogue, Dan positions himself as a pragmatic, solutions-oriented candidate who transcends partisan divides, aiming to put Maui first and empower local families to thrive economically and socially. His approach is grounded in fiscal responsibility, support for small businesses and agriculture, and fostering sustainable growth that respects Maui’s unique environment and culture.
Highlights
- [00:56] Dan Johnson introduces himself as a lifelong Maui resident representing upcountry Maui in District 12.
- [04:08] Dan discusses unsustainable housing prices reaching over $1 million and the impact on local families.
- [07:13] Proposal to remove capital gains tax on home sales to local owner-occupants to encourage local ownership.
- [13:10] Explanation of how historically low mortgage interest rates inflated housing prices during COVID-19.
- [18:41] Advocates for removing the general excise tax on food to reduce living costs.
- [24:51] Criticism of state funding for Honolulu rail project, arguing it does not benefit Maui taxpayers.
- [42:01] Emphasis on personal freedom regarding COVID mandates and limiting government overreach.
Key Insights
- [01:28] Deep Local Connection Shapes Vision: Dan emphasizes his multi-generational roots on Maui and his personal stake in preserving the community for future generations. This authentic connection drives his focus on local-first policies rather than catering primarily to outside investors or large businesses. His perspective highlights the importance of candidates rooted in their communities to address localized crises effectively.
- [04:39] External Investment Drives Housing Crisis: Dan identifies that much of the housing price inflation is fueled by mainland and foreign investors who have greater purchasing power than locals. This dynamic artificially inflates prices, pushing native residents out. His proposed capital gains tax exemption for sales to local buyers is an innovative attempt to create a market incentive favoring residents over speculative investors, which could help stabilize the housing market.
- [13:10] Mortgage Interest Rates Impact Housing Affordability: The interview explains how the low mortgage rates during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed buyers to afford higher home prices, leading to an artificial inflation of the market. This macroeconomic factor shows how national policies directly affect local housing markets, emphasizing the complexity of solving affordability issues without broader economic shifts.
- [18:41] ️ Tax Relief on Essentials Can Erode Cost of Living: Dan’s support for removing general excise tax on food represents a targeted approach to reduce costs for all residents, particularly benefiting low-income families. While it may seem a broad-brush policy, such measures can have meaningful impact on household budgets, which is critical in an expensive market like Maui’s. However, balancing tax revenue losses with public service funding remains a legislative challenge.
- [24:51] Selective Opposition to State Spending on Projects: Dan critiques the state’s expenditure on Oahu’s rail transit system, arguing Maui taxpayers should not fund projects that do not serve their island. This stance underscores his philosophy of fiscal conservatism and prioritizing local needs over statewide or regional projects that do not offer direct benefits to his constituents. It reflects a broader debate about resource allocation equity within states with multiple islands or regions.
- [42:01] ⚖️ Personal Freedom and Government Accountability: Dan strongly advocates for protecting personal freedoms, especially in the context of COVID-19 mandates, and calls for judicial review of emergency powers to prevent government overreach. This aligns with a broader national discourse about balancing public health measures and civil liberties, highlighting how these debates resonate even at the state legislative level. He supports consequences like impeachment for officials who abuse emergency powers, reflecting his commitment to checks and balances.
- [29:58] Infrastructure and Sustainability as Foundations for Economic Health: Dan points out critical water infrastructure challenges facing upcountry Maui’s agriculture and residential needs. He advocates for sustainable water use, including repurposing wastewater for irrigation, which would support local farming and reduce dependence on imported food. His background in renewables and project management informs his practical approach to sustainability, combining environmental stewardship with economic pragmatism.
- [34:00] Bipartisan and Independent Approach: Although running as a Republican, Dan distances himself from partisan extremes, emphasizing practical solutions over ideology. He recognizes shared values across party lines, such as fiscal responsibility and sustainability, and calls for cooperation to solve Maui’s complex problems. This non-polarizing approach could appeal to a broad base of voters frustrated with national political divisions.
- [40:22] Candidate Learning and Collaboration: Dan’s engagement with current legislators and party structures to learn the legislative process and develop his platform shows an understanding of political realities. His willingness to introduce fresh ideas while integrating feedback from experienced lawmakers suggests a pragmatic and collaborative style that may enhance his effectiveness if elected.
- [15:22] ️ Urgency for New Housing Solutions: The discussion acknowledges that rising interest rates may slow buyers but not quickly enough to solve the affordability crisis. Dan hints at the need for innovative inventory solutions focused on local ownership with unique rules to preserve affordability, recognizing that market forces alone won’t fix the deep-rooted housing shortage.
- [23:19] ️ Complexity of Homelessness Requires Coordinated Response: Dan identifies homelessness as a multifaceted issue involving economic hardship, mental health, and social services. He notes that state and county programs need to collaborate and fund sustainable housing and support systems for affected populations. This holistic understanding highlights the limitations of piecemeal approaches and the need for comprehensive policy.
- [37:55] Tax Incentives as Conservative Tools for Growth: Dan advocates using tax credits and incentives rather than mandates to foster economic development and sustainability projects, citing solar energy growth as a successful example. This market-driven approach aligns with conservative fiscal principles and suggests a preference for empowering individual choices and entrepreneurship over heavy regulation.
- [19:51] ⚖️ Balancing Tax Relief and Government Revenue: The interview surfaces the tension between lowering taxes to ease living costs and maintaining sufficient government revenue to fund essential services. Dan acknowledges the difficulty in cutting government budgets without sacrificing service quality, illustrating the perennial challenge legislators face in fiscal policymaking.
- [42:32] Family and Future Generations as Motivation: Dan’s personal narrative about his young children attending public school and his commitment to ensuring they inherit a livable Maui grounds his political motivation in tangible family concerns. This humanizes the policy debate and connects broader economic and social issues to individual lives.
Conclusion
Dan Johnson presents a thoughtful, community-focused candidacy rooted in Maui’s unique challenges and opportunities. His platform blends fiscal conservatism with progressive sustainability goals, advocating for local ownership, tax relief, and infrastructure improvements to address Maui’s cost of living crisis. His emphasis on personal freedoms, government accountability, and bipartisan cooperation provides a refreshing approach to local politics. While recognizing the complexity of issues like housing and homelessness, Dan offers concrete proposals and a pragmatic mindset aimed at moving beyond ideological gridlock to enact meaningful change for Maui residents.
Transcript
00:00
[Music] aloha everyone i’m your host jason schwartz and i am here at the neutral zone it’s anything but neutral today we have a wonderful guest dan johnson is running for district 12. state house here in maui hawaii where are the areas there dan that you’re covering hello jason yeah thanks for having me so um i represent upcountry maui effectively that’s makawao kukulani goes as far as kanayo and some parts of calpo too so that’s for the state legislature what made you decide to run right now
00:56
so i was uh born and raised in maui i grew up in kihei actually and i moved very far from the nest to up country but uh yeah i’ve got family here for four generations uh born and raised uh wife kids two sets of grandparents and everything like that maui’s my home and as time goes on just everybody can see how ridiculous the cost of living is here and then i got family members cousins that are pushed out of here that moved to washington or some in texas and they just had they didn’t have any roots
01:28
there before and they just couldn’t live in their home and that’s just sad i can’t imagine what that’s like uh to be forced to leave um versus you know preference or opportunity those are those are different things but the cost of living being one of the primary factors and that’s that’s not a sustainable thing hawaii is pushing towards sustainability i think sustainable living is another factor it needs to be pushed toward but yes um so i am currently running for the the state
01:59
representative district 12. never had any experience in politics i’ve been in construction for my career as a project manager for general contracting solar and you know different renewables and stuff like that for about six years now graduated from university of hawaii at manoa with a finance degree so i got into budgeting and development kind of stuff like that had some law classes did environmental law business law things like that so i do a lot of contracts project management renewables and um
02:35
yeah just compounding with with what i said to start about the cost of living here i want to see something done about it really more of a maui first perspective because uh being born and raised in maui along hawaii you can see there’s a oahu centrism going on where our states focus there most of our populations focus there and all of our infrastructure and funds primarily come from and go there but maui seems to be forgotten by comparison for some things and i think we need a candidate that puts
03:08
maui people now with families first not businesses first even though i’m running as a republican and pro-business pro-enterprise and all that but ultimately it’s got to have a sustainable system for people to live in and grow in otherwise you can have a great environment for business but if there’s no people no residents that live there you don’t have a you don’t have a good system so it’s got to be healthy and happy for everyone so how would you how would you uh recommend i mean when you talk about a
03:35
sustainable situation the cost of living are high and uh most people would say well we’re gonna have to lower the prices somehow how and what can you do in the legislature that you think may help that what are you thinking yeah so for cost of living a couple things that i want to do you know you could pick a bunch of different issues there’s a lot facing us but you got to focus on what you can tackle and do what you can about it so for housing prices um looking at 1.1 million dollars i don’t
04:08
know as the immediate home price i don’t know who can afford a down payment for that that’s insane it’s gone up about a half a million in the past couple years so i don’t know what kind of residential family can afford that and then housing prices mortgages ultimately affect the cost of rent because there’s different capital ace capitalization rates and debt service expenses uh that have to be covered for landlords as well so some of this i believe is due to external investment whether that’s
04:39
foreign investment or even just other people in the mainland moving here to have more money so we saw um in covet a bunch of people working from home like like i’m doing right now um and they want to live in a beautiful place and i don’t doubt them for that or blame them fault them for choosing to do so but what happens is you have economic systems that provide more growth elsewhere than hawaii that’s that’s one of the core routes is we we’re not a pro business state we’re not a pro
05:09
you know small business but as far as that goes i should rephrase that but what we need to do sorry um to finish here for express i’m trying to understand how i know that i agree with you you’re right we got to be pro-business but how do we accomplish that that i’m not clear on that’s if we if we all know how to do that we would already be doing that because i think a lot of us know that it’s how do you grow a business you have to have a population base to support the businesses so we see companies from the
05:42
mainland coming here open up their chain stores all these new places come in but they’re not owned by people from here and they have all kinds of cash to be able to carry them through rough times and things are crazy it’s hard to start things last two years were not easy on local business owners but yes for housing specifically as i was gearing up to there when you have the housing prices being driven up externally more than what locals can afford you hear about housing developments and
06:14
affordable housing and basically what they do is they have some developers and contractors that work with the different authorities having jurisdiction county state and whatnot to get approvals to build these projects a lot of times they’re choosing one example is they’ll build like 100 homes and then they’ll sell four of them for 700 000 at cost or something and call it affordable housing and then everything else at 1.1 or 1.4 million um but that requires development of the land and i i love my landscape i love
06:45
maui being country so i don’t want to see it grown more than it needs to and i understand that we got to have housing for people but one thing that i started thinking about is no one is doing anything about the existing housing next to nothing like there’s some first-time home buyer programs and different incentives that counties and states are doing but what about removing the capital gain tax so if you sell to a hawaii resident i would like to propose that you don’t have to pay any capital gains um
07:13
on your sale to your to your home if it’s going to be an owner-occupied property so with hawaii we have a 11 tax rate on the state level can’t do anything about the federal level but the federal gives you a forgiveness of about 500 000 if it’s a owner occupied property and the state of hawaii um for example like my family bought a home here a long time ago and might be looking at if they sold it paying somewhere like upwards of over a million dollars in capital gains taxes and if if you look at that as a
07:46
as a seller and you’re selling to a two options come before you you got someone as a local family they offer you let’s pick really round numbers so let’s say the homes listed at a million and the um the first person comes to you with nine hundred thousand and their owner occupant they’re going to live in hawaii and be a member of this program and then somebody else from the mainland has a lot of money and they want to move here and they’re willing to pay you 1.1 million but guess what if you
08:15
put the option in the seller’s hands and encourage it from the state with taxes to shift it towards local residents what you would do is you would tell them that they wouldn’t have to pay any capital gains on on their sale if they sell it to a resident so you’re you’d be buying a buffer back between local families and corporations companies um sometimes banks are buying up properties and they’re not going to be owner occupant so they wouldn’t qualify for that credit so that way it’s very fair to anybody who’s
08:48
going to be a resident owner you can you can buy that back and i think that’s just one small thing that you can do to help with it and i think what you just said at the end was the most important thing it’s a small thing and when you’re talking about a million dollar house and no one can afford it they can’t afford 900 000 1.4 million we need affordable housing and the numbers got to be a third of that and you got to change what you call affordable and you got to find how are we going to now if we get let
09:19
that revenue go what’s the state going to do how much revenue is it going to lose and then that old story of okay we have less money now what are we going to do to solve eight things with one dollar so here’s that we run into a revenue problem i see you on that i think the state should operate with a smaller budget and reduce the government in general to more essential services however when you look at what i was just proposing what is the the homeowner actually providing of economic value to
09:50
the state so let’s say they bought a house for 100 000 40 years ago and then through the factors of inflation and market craziness their home is just worth more now so what did they actually provide to the state that is of taxable value to be honest so what what are they taking from the state in other words by not uh what what is the state foregoing they’re just foregoing taking more money out of the transaction that they really didn’t encourage or foster i’m not worried about who encourages in
10:24
foster i’m saying right now whether one encourages or foster we’ve got this system to maintain i can bring i definitely appreciate like you do there’s so many jobs that i’m sure you know we can streamline we still are not getting all the services we need so people would say why are you cutting jobs we’re not getting enough services now we need more jobs and we say okay wait what pocket do i take it from now now we just lose this revenue we lose this probably i’m constantly wondering
10:59
um like we said how much are people willing to pay for the services that they demand and yeah oftentimes they’re they’re not willing to pay they they’re trying to pay less and less and less and tell the government that they want them to do it that’s a rough deal no matter where you sit it’s like so there’s no no yeah there’s so many layers that macro economic micro economic and the local and world perspective that contribute to why our economy is priced as it is at a state level do you feel you can
11:34
make uh specific i mean i see that i just think it’s um not the bulk where the bulk of the problem is is we’ve got to have enough affordable housing we’ve heard people here talk about oh um to tax like you say people with second houses to change their tax tier and make it so high that it’s not a good idea to to be having rental income property here because we’re going to tax you so heavily on it so getting more people yeah like i said for local residents first we clearly have no problem with
12:10
demand to be in hawaii so i think that we can not tax our locals i i think you know you can’t expressly do that constitutionally but the way that you do that is you encourage things to be locally owned and like like i just said by a buffer back to to in the favor of residents purchasing homes in the but the purchasing power is ultimately um [Music] going to be coming elsewhere like it’s very rare unless you have a business a small business that’s really successful here no one’s gonna be able
12:41
to afford that um but to add to what you’re saying though um a lot of times the housing market is priced on what the market will bear and currently uh we had just experienced the lockdown for the past couple years where the federal government was spending a lot of money and they had a really low interest rate so they had to bring those interest rates down and then we were able to see mortgage rates down in like the low two percent which are historically low but what happened is people realize that the
13:10
mortgage payment is the thing that was driving the housing prices because they realized they could sell their home for more because people were willing to take out more money and buy up the market drive up the market because instead of having a six percent interest and a six hundred thousand dollar home uh they’re able to have a nine hundred and fifty thousand dollar home and a two and a half percent interest and the mortgage payments about the same i mean mathematically there’s there’s a way of
13:38
finding that but that’s approximately what it was like there’s about a three to four hundred thousand dollar inflation across the board just because of the low interest rates and currently the federal government is adjusting those interest rates up so i believe we’re going to see naturally a decline in interest um interest as in desire to purchase homes here and when those prices come back down and then we have measures in place to encourage local ownership reduce taxes and uh streamline the processes to home
14:09
ownership that make it possible for locals you’re gonna see that change and then that’s not only just for home ownership i do believe that a path to home ownership is the way to have self-empowerment uh for individuals and financial freedom and responsibility for their lives but that’s not an option for everyone i understand but when you bring the cost of home ownership down that brings the cost of debt service mortgages and landlords that might own and sell and rent to somebody you’re
14:38
going to bring the rental costs down i i hear you and um i guess from being here so long i’ve watched um i’ve watched more and more people are renters the jobs that will be able to support these median income the prices are so high and the the percentages of non non-maui i want to say ownership are high i don’t know how we can bring it down i almost think like we have to create another love level of inventory that’s selectively local and has different kind of rules um when you you think that the interest
15:22
rates going up are going to slow people from buying i do maybe it will and you know there’s no doubt in theory that will i just don’t know if it’s going to be quick enough to solve this extraordinary problem that’s why i was wondering like i i was thinking to myself that the people that are now we see a shift from people that were running and acting here locally that they’re now running at the state level why is that because they feel maybe that at the state level they can affect
15:56
changes they’re going to make what’s going on local better i wonder i’m having a couple of conversations with people about that because um i’m just wondering these problems are so big theoretical things are only i don’t know how to stop people you think that there is not enough people there that there are people in the world that will buy maui less and lower our costs of housing i don’t think there’s any way to lower the cost of housing and i really think we have to somehow supplement the
16:30
ability of the local people to buy it however so that was just a suggestion that i threw out the home ownership but yeah across the board we need to have more ways of taking the government restrictions down lifting people up did you see that in today’s paper mazie hirono came to maui and said we need more infrastructure here i always i’m wondering that they bring up things but then they don’t find ways to pay for it if you i know you you say you’re running as a republican when i think republican
17:04
i always think about fiscally conservative which is why i’m going back to that kind of a theme because a lot of social programs require a lot of a lot of money and we’ve seen watching you’ve seen i’m sure that the dollar gets less and less valuable as we keep creating social programs out of money that doesn’t exist and it just gets worse and worse and worse how do you stop that so for me as a like you said as a republican you associate with fiscal conservative and i majored in finance i
17:38
manage business budgets and construction and stuff like that so that’s where i’m coming from as well sure the way conservatives and republicans should encourage things is incentivizing them by taking less out of the transaction from the government perspective so like i said i’d be offering a tax credit a relief and then when it comes to things like um new small business i support a lot of agriculture here as well we need to have locally owned agriculture and locally owned investment in agriculture so just
18:09
like the federal government and state issue construction bonds and stuff like that but also have um agricultural bonds with low interest rates funded by you know different taxpayers so the state’s still getting something back on a one percent interest loan for a farmer to get more equipment or acquire a piece of land or something to grow crops and feed the families and feed the aina and then also another thing that can be done is the state manages the taxing ability so the general excise tax
18:41
currently we pay actually maui does pay at least every other island has a surcharge luckily maui’s mayor hasn’t chosen to add on a surcharge but we pay 4.1 167 if we were to reduce and remove i would support removing uh get tax on food sales like you know that’s just an instant four percent reduction in your food cost for the year so you just gotta chip away at all these little things that you can reduce and and cut in the favor of people and residents here [Music] well the only thing i see an issue with that
19:51
imagine a four percent reduction in your your food cost if you pay you know ten thousand dollars a year in food or whatever and you’re getting a you know a reduction of 400 bucks that’s a lot you know i i’m hearing i just um i wonder in practicality i don’t see it happening i i hear you i don’t really see that as being that meaningful um how do we get people to buy local food when producing it local costs more right and when the cost of the land is all the things that factor in price
20:29
i can see how it’s again theoretical it’ll help but i i’m just just wondering oh i i’m with the where to get the money when we keep giving benefits back to the people uh which i like benefits back to the people but i’m trying to figure out how to and have it make sense how do we reduce the number of people and when we need services how do we reduce the taxes for the people when we have to pay for them somehow that for the challenge i see a legislature wrestling with where are their
21:04
priorities you know like you’re saying and your priority is is a general priority but i’m right now what do we do with the people that are homeless how do we create it so that homeless isn’t one lump idea i mean i don’t know exactly what it takes to build emergency housing but i keep thinking if if we have an emergency and we need that many homes we should be doing some kind of even if it’s tense i mean i don’t really know what they do for when you have a hundred thousand or fifty thousand
21:41
people said mature and yet we’re not dealing with that level we’re trying to push them into programs here when i speak to most people here they say oh the state controls that yeah but so when i see the homeless problems it’s really rampant on water and unfortunately maui is growing too and i think that’s just a sign of systematic failure but also we do have a lot of homeless that are relocated here because it’s warm and the climate’s nice during covid they were actually if you
22:13
didn’t have an address you were staying in they were pushing people away and you could see that that changed a little bit some of those people were returning but right now you have they used some of the phenom fema money on maui to build up some temporary housing and it’s kind of semi-permanent now that uh i think it’s on yla avenue over on um one of the parks i forget what it’s called you’re talking about those 23 metal boxes with air conditioning yeah and now they’re going to lose them because they
22:45
don’t have the 23 families it’s not a lot of handling and i’m just thinking that’s why i said i don’t really know why we can’t deal with this like the military might and have more significant group housing and rules and opportunities for those people to have something to do other than just be sitting around put them into programs to try to build some kind of direction for people right there’s people there’s there’s probably a couple different categories of homelessness there’s people who are
23:19
economically um unable to afford you know housing or if they if they either have a low-paying job or or don’t have a job at all um then there’s also a mental disability aspect too so there’s a there’s a health and social services side of that a lot of times that ends up being the county programs taking care of that the state does have a department of health that could look into helping out people like that but again you’re talking about programs that cost more money a lot of
23:46
times unfortunately these people won’t be able to seek help so it is a difficult issue and certainly part of being a representative is willing to look out to and reach out to the you know the people who are experts and take opinions and find out paths you know just say i have all the answers follow me so i’m i’m very strong on fiscal conservative um cost of living things like that that i believe would help everybody like i said across the board make it less expensive to live here and then just from that
24:18
having lower costs of housing driving down food prices and making it more generally affordable i do believe that that would systematically reduce homeless in itself i think if you provide and who can economize so now would that take legislation you’re thinking yeah so some of the stuff i was speaking about earlier but um you know talk about you know what we spend money on uh if you can look into it i don’t know the current number but i think it’s somewhere around like 2.8 billion dollars that hawaii
24:51
state taxpayers have paid to fund the rail project and right now i i for work i go back and forth to oahu all the time i don’t see that being used very often but whatever we we got sunk cost we signed up for it we built it we funded it it currently runs from kapolei to honolulu and then that’s being funded from three sources like heart it’s also got i believe some federal funding coming in and the city and counties paying for part of it as well but my my stance would be i don’t want
25:18
to pay another single dime from hawaii state tax ceremony because it’s already in the jurisdiction and the city county of honolulu we’ve already paid a large amount of money to get the infrastructure there i don’t think it advances the interests of the people of maui oahu kawaii or even for that matter oahu people who don’t use that so i wouldn’t support state money [Music] and then the county of honolulu is a big revenue creator and they can certainly finish the project well that was interesting they can
25:54
certainly finish it and like and then not be used right yeah that’s very expensive well like i said there’s different things that we can cut back you know as a project manager i’ve worked on state projects for you know different different jurisdictions of you know schools hospitals airports and i mean to be honest they don’t do things the cheapest you know they do have you know competitive bids and stuff like that but a lot of times what they spend money on who’s the decision makers and um
26:25
you know all the different hands that that touch a transaction i think could be looked at and streamlined as well you know i’m speaking from some personal experience there but yeah i think there’s a lot of stuff that i could look into there with with um those programs um any any things that you’ve been watching that you think you could be uh getting rid of i’m just really really just searching like if you’re looking at all this stuff because i i always think that something’s got to be done for example
27:02
to um cut i don’t know how you can help it how do you cut costs to i can tell you one uh as far as i do support education and i want to make sure that teachers have an affordable cost of living access to housing and we have a teacher shortage where it’s just not desirable to live or work here so they’re leaving we need money and education as one of the i think it’s like 24 of our state’s budget goes to education we need to support teachers in the most effective ways but like i said it’s not
27:35
necessarily the answer is more money it’s auditing those programs getting rid of wastefulness i don’t know to the extent from the outside as a citizen what’s happening to do that i would sure hope they’re auditing programs and getting rid of fat but from what i’ve seen and what on the outside my impressions i’m not sure that that’s happening um and then also to talk about you know schooling and education get into where the last state masking our children and and requiring
28:06
everybody to get a coveted vaccine to play in sports all these things that are being done on the social level in school as well that i i don’t support so definitely look to change the superintendent if i could with whatever capacities i have i know that that really would be the governor’s opinion uh an ability to appoint or alter that but yeah um what other issues are important to you that you’d like to talk about i mean i when i’m doing these shows oftentimes um people have pet projects or pet
28:46
things that really got them interested you’re just you’re i can see that by your nature of being conservative financially which i am i don’t always hold that to be a republican trait but i i think it’s a really important thing that we always look at it being conservative but trying to figure out where can we create who can we tax more who can we get fees from well what are we going to do why is education money coming only from the state and not locally how any thoughts about change i’ve often
29:23
heard that than in other states monies for education come from a different pocket um yeah so along those lines of you know kind of intergovernmental coordination there’s a couple things you know we talked about cost of living agriculture and just making it more appealing for people to live here um across the board fairly that’s you know been been established but for uh infrastructure currently county and especially for our country residents we don’t have the water infrastructure we don’t have the
29:58
ability to have you know farming and we’re using currently a lot of just potable water to pour on our fields sometimes too for the smaller farms because we don’t have um waste water infrastructure reappropriated to you know more sustainably use that wastewater for irrigating and you know every time you flush a toilet you’re flesh and drinking water for the most part so a lot a lot of the new developments need to make sure that those things are um included in there so like whenever a new
30:27
development is approved that they get a new you know when they run out of sewer line and utilities to it they also run non-potables for the yards and irrigation and stuff like that make water more sustainable i’m a you know if there’s a green republican i guess maybe i would fall into that category i support sustainability and you know different renewable programs because we live in an island we have finite resources and economically it makes more sense i mean i put solar on my house and different things like that you can
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see the i’m not really much of a salesman but whenever i talk to somebody about solar it’s really easy to just show them the bottom line and what you’re paying for you know diesel fueled energy from the utility versus what you can do if you generate it yourself there’s a sustainability aspect and a financial aspect as well just because of how expensive things are over here oh yes in addition to that the um the water shortages of country um currently are it’s it’s really kind of a complex issue
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but you might be aware of the details but the board of water is sort of like a private company the county is responsible but then the state is really stepping in to pay for improvements and it just kind of ends up being okay well we just we don’t have water or the pumps don’t work or the earthquake dry sorry water meter you can get one in 28 years oh you can’t even sign up anymore you know that’s that’s unacceptable so i would work to get state funds for what i would spend money on an
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infrastructure to get um you know figure out a food if we can drill for a well what that would cost for that to see what that would be or more surface collection just one quick i’m sorry there’s a lot of noise coming do you have wind there or is there a microphone or something that’s been moving can you hear me all right i might um it might be the windows behind me let me go close those it is a little windy sorry about that well you know it’s interesting yeah yeah yeah because it was it was suddenly
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we were competing to hear your voice sorry about that that’s okay i i like this thing with zoom when you hold up different objects you can see through them it’s thoroughly out of my water um you know when i say republican democrat if people take and throw those letters away and look do you see very much difference i don’t really see very much difference here locally between parties it’s just uh something i’m not real clear about i mean you don’t seem that different than a
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democrat meaning a citizen who’s concerned you’re aware about being fiscally responsible you’re interested in renewable energy you’re interested in keeping costs down but giving uh powerful solutions to the people and thank you yeah i mean we really ought to come together on this like the i probably could have run as an independent but i just chose to align with a party that i agreed with more um but it comes down to how we go about it really um it comes from you know some people will try to use
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extremes and different generalizations but i’m not for that i think that you know at a core people on the left are generally more trusting in government and would rather have big government manage and then people on the right are more for personal responsibility and would rather have less restrictions um you know if that’s a generalization yes and i’m and i find myself i think of my itself as independent and green like you’re talking about a green republican some people say that i am i have like just like you it
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sounds like we’re talking the same language but i’m just identified differently because i see that you’re you’re obviously uh when you say you agree more with the republicans and democrats i think the democrats are starting to get tired of their thing about kids building a big government and i’m gonna lose it on that one i do believe you’re gonna see a bunch of people walking away from the democrat party i mean we ultimately we’re talking about state issues local issues and that’s
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ultimately the jurisdiction of our responsibility as far as the office that i’m talking about and looking at but nationally you see the what’s happening on the national scale the different economic impacts and difficulties and quite honestly my opinion failures of the presidential administration it’s kind of like free marketing for republicans because i feel like most people in the midterm elections are gonna change their mind on how they’re voting because if you if you like how it’s
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going if you like six dollar a gallon gas nine dollar gallon gas whatever you feel about gas in general whether it’s environmental concerns or whatnot um cost of living and art status in place in the world uh i think you’re going to see a bunch of people swinging back towards you know more conservative values and shift to vote republican in november well that’s interesting we shall see i know that i um to say the word republican these days that becomes a whole conversation that gets off into you know
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a noise of stuff to be honest even within republicans i don’t think that we all agree i don’t think you can generalize you know because there’s there’s republicans who are the the stereotypical like big business prophets only no no concerns for the people which is a stereotype like in an extreme but nonetheless like like i was saying conservative values should really use the government as a navigational tool because the government doesn’t create anything the government just manages stuff so if you use less taxes
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to encourage something rather than mandating or making a quota or spending money on a program if you encourage something to be done happens like for instance with the solar panels like the idea of renewable energy there’s a there’s a tax credit you’re gonna spend x amount of money and pay the federal government or the federal government or the state that also offers a credit in this example they’re just gonna take less money from you to do something they want you to do they’re not gonna mandate it they’re not
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gonna they’re not gonna you know another example would be like a more authoritarian way would be to require it mandate it and make the you know any new development required which they do to some extent on some things but what you do when you do that is you get people that don’t want it uh just driving up the cost of everything else across the board so if you want to participate in this and you believe in it and you want to support it you’re going to get an incentive for doing it and look what’s happened we’ve
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seen the growth of that economy we’ve seen that whole industry grow by a what is a conservative principle by the idea of funding something with the tax credit rather than creating a tax increase to create a bucket of money that goes to paying for those programs directly across the board you know what i mean well it’s interesting i i’m what my mind was reeling back to was i was in the solar business in the imagine 1980s right and i remember that how um there was a fight that they didn’t want
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to offer tax credits because it didn’t make economic sense but sometimes you have to reach out before it makes economic sense to get enough volume so it can make economic sense so um yeah i mean the the cost of you know it helped with the federal government doing it a much bigger purchaser encouraging it was the entire american population but on our state level as well you know having another credit it definitely subsidized the the cost for a while where the industry was kind of in infancy and the first solar panel
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i set personally in 2012 cost like 800 bucks for a 235 watt panel and now for about like 150 costs are going up again unfortunately but um about 150 to 200 bucks if you get a 400 watt panel you know i mean like the technologies increase costs have been uh driven down and a lot of that was on the back of the investment tax credit um have you any um what am i going to say i’m i’m fishing a little only looking for different areas where being in the legislature have you spoken to any of the other
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legislators here and any kind of idea of what they may need or they have problems that they need help with i haven’t i’m just curious um if you have any kind of interaction with any others from the state legislature these days yeah so that’s one of the nice things about being a candidate and at least within my own party um i’ve been able to be introduced to the you know there’s only four of them but i was able to meet you know the the different legislators that are here we have four seats in one
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center um but yeah they were able to talk and get input on their experience how you know just logistically things work and then also developing a platform what the you know initiatives are so that’s one nice thing about having parties some sometimes they’ll they’ll help encourage you and and build your growth and development with that kind of stuff but then i’ve brought a lot of my own ideas as an independent as well like my ideas on housing cost of living and agriculture all my ideas right so
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yeah just just um being able to have that open discussion is really nice i’m sure you’re contributing to their increasing basis yeah i actually think a lot of people are gonna adopt my my tax credit for sale to local resident or primary owner it’s just to me i keep wondering like we say it’s such a small number it’s not a bad thing i’m not saying it’s bad i’m only thinking like how do you move an 800 pound gorilla right but yeah um yeah it’s it’s definitely it’s an
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interesting time that we live in too to be honest the main reason that i’m running is because of the the lockdowns and restrictions and mandates requirements i mean on maui you saw we literally had the national guard on the highway telling you if you’re if you’re an essential citizen or doing an essential purpose for a short period of time there um i know that that’s what you know my grandfather fought in world war ii that’s ultimately what brought everybody to hawaii and my family on that side
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i don’t think that people stormed the beaches of normandy or or fought for our country to come home and say that they’re you can’t have a job as a firefighter because you’re unvaccinated or you can’t have your kids play in school or you can’t have a job or there’s all these restrictions regardless take the take the substance of the thing out whatever you feel about it either way it should be your own choice and i don’t think that you should be able to fire somebody for what they do
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or don’t do and um yeah a lot of these things contributed to that too and i got a five-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter that are gonna go into the public school system next year and you know come what is it like august something when they when they start if they still have that mass mandate i’ve been fighting it and i’ll be fighting it as an individual citizen but i’d also like to find it as a legislator as well so some of those things with personal uh freedom civil liberties
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personal responsibility and um putting the power back into people’s hand more so than the government and put a restrictive authority um on emergency privileges so like the governor mayor whoever executive privilege is claiming um an emergency i think that that should be the obligation of the court to review and not the obligation of the citizen or the burden of a citizen to have to sue for their freedom because that’s currently how it is if you don’t like it you gotta sue and then go through the whole lawsuit
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process and that’s why we had the mass mandates on airplanes until a district judge of the supreme court in florida finally kicked it out but it took two years to get there so this is you know at least on the state level i don’t want to be i don’t want to restrict the governor’s ability to act in case there is a you know big hurricane or an invasion of another country he’s got to be able to you know act but nonetheless it should be the responsibility of the courts to review it and i think there should be harsh
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privileges if it’s deemed that you overstepped you abused power i think impeachment is a nice thing to to throw in there as a consequence at the very least a cease and desist um when i hear the word impeachment you just sort of open my uh ears to something do you think that stuff in the national level is gonna resolve or are we gonna always be fighting over this stuff you know what with with uh what issue uh i don’t think there’s any a fight between the right and the left about freedom and choice of masks i hear
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people that are very left and very right and some of the people that are in the middle often think that those groups are together but they’re not you know it’s a it’s confusing advocates on both sides for either way it’s it’s really a non-partisan issue on a national issue and i hear the word impeachment and this thing about trump and impeachment in january 6 and all this stuff i don’t know if local with being us a small place whether that becomes an issue at all in your i mean that’s in the past really
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i mean and also it’s a federal issue from what is it like two years ago now so to you and i but yet yeah i we hear it a lot out of people’s mouths still and um i i i have a candidate on the other side who’s running for state house bring it up and i was like i didn’t really know if it was something that was somehow discussed or like you say it was individuals that are pulling it up and playing with that well right i mean sometimes it’s a conversational point you want to see where someone feels
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about something i was talking about impeaching a you know an executive branch of our government because i wouldn’t as a state legislature have any authority to have any decision on the federal level well i’m just saying when i heard the word impeachment that’s what’s triggering me because even in this election cycle people are bringing it up again even though it has like you say we have nothing to do with it but somehow is one of their decided talking points so i’m glad that you’re not okay well yeah i
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mean i i’m not trying to look for apologies if i brought it up no no no no you didn’t you didn’t i i just triggered me i’m only triggered because i’m speaking to a lot of different uh people and it often makes me think why are we talking about but impeachment like you say that’s a very big step and again what is that when we have impeachment maybe we’re improving the future but we are living with the problems from the past which we seem to do a lot around here like well right i mean the
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the idea isn’t isn’t to just be throwing people out all over the place it’s to make you know it established that your job is to govern and lead the people not arbitrarily be there and deciding every step of every day of their life you know what i mean you’re supposed to look out provide and protect people you know so then don’t over step because really don’t don’t usurp your your authority but with um inalienable rights quite honestly of citizens uh anything that you’re gonna be talking to
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the voters and uh wanting to give them a reason to vote for you and anything i’d like to give you a place to do that if you can no sure thanks but yeah i mean i’m just my name is dan johnson i’m from maui born and raised here multi-generational i have a family here i love living here i want to make sure that my children have a place to grow up and then they get to make their own choices and navigate their own lives because i don’t think that i know any better about your life and your decisions what
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you want to do than you you’re the best person to author your own fate so vote for me is like a vote for you because i’m for the people and maui first maui people well dan thank you for joining me here you’re an important guest and uh i really must say you’re very well spoken and you support your issues as you’re talking them with specifics that’s very appreciated thank you yeah how novel yeah i just want to see stuff get done i’m a worker you put me in and i’ll do
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it that’s it so everyone out there just i just want everyone to know this is dan johnson state house district 12 and uh if you’re in his area and you see the name johnson please realize you can vote for him he’s a really dynamic man and he’s going to be here with his family and wants to be part of solving the problems that we’ve done thank you dan thank you for coming and thank all you out there in in video audio land and i hope you’ll visit us again and you can watch this interview again go to
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maui neutral zone.com or go up on youtube and put dan johnson comma jason schwartz and up it’ll come thank you dan be well thank you hello everyone see you again [Music] you
