Mayor Richard Bissen’s proposal to turn more than 7,000 short-term vacation rentals into long-term housing has quickly become a top issue in the race for the South Maui seat on the County Council.

But it could do more than determine whether voters want incumbent Tom Cook or former three-term council member Kelly King, who are running along with political newcomer Johnny Prones in the Aug. 10 nonpartisan primary race.

The balance of power on the nine-member council could also hinge on who is chosen to represent the district that includes Maalaea, Wailea and Kihei, where altogether half of the affected housing units are located.

If King regains the seat, it would likely swing the council back to a more progressive 5-4 majority. If Cook holds onto it, the more conservative-leaning faction, all of whom are backed by the construction industry, would likely remain in control.

“The council is on a knife edge,” said longtime Maui political observer and retired University of Hawaii Maui College economics professor Dick Mayer. “The results will determine which way the council goes on almost every issue.” 

The power balance is important not only in terms of what the council ultimately does with the so-called Minatoya list housing bill, but also who gets confirmed to Cabinet positions in the mayor’s administration and key boards, how major policy decisions are shaped and how the county spends its $1.7 billion budget.

While council members must live in the districts they represent, every county voter can vote in every council race. So it’s not just up to South Maui. 

All nine seats are up for election. But in the primary, the ballot will only include the races for South Maui and Upcountry, pitting council member Yuki Lei Sugimura against Jocelyn Cruz, an executive assistant at Licorice Pizza Records, and Ed Codelia, a UPS dispatch supervisor and Realtor. 

That’s because the candidates for two of the seats — incumbents Shane Sinenci for East Maui and Gabe Johnson for Lanai, both part of the progressive faction — are unopposed and the other five seats each only have two candidates who automatically advance to the general election Nov. 5. Political experts expect Cook and King will easily advance to the general over Prones, who lacks name recognition and campaign funding.

The mayor’s housing bill has worked its way through the county planning commissions on Maui, Lanai and Molokai for their recommendations on what the council should do. It’s grown more divisive over the past two months, with the Maui Planning Commission chair having to rein in the frustrations on both sides during its packed all-day meeting Tuesday in which the commission recommended the council pass the proposal with some additional considerations.

Experts say the pending legislation would help address the county’s long-standing housing crisis, which was only exacerbated by the Aug. 8 fires. But it could be a blow to Maui’s tourism-driven economy. Many locals in desperate need of affordable housing have testified in support while people who own the rental properties — only 13% have Maui County addresses, according to the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement — detail the threat to their livelihoods and those they employ on island. 

It’s unlikely the council will take up the measure before the primary, let alone the general election in November, as it waits for more information from studies.

The mayor is working with UHERO on a study and the council in June put $300,000 in this year’s budget to do its own. On Wednesday, the council discussed the scope of work that should be included in its request for proposals, which Council Chair Alice Lee is handling, for a study on the phase-out of vacation rentals in the apartment districts where all these properties are located. 

King: ‘We’re Continuing To Overdevelop’

King, 64, first joined the council in 2016, ousting Don Couch by less than 2% of the vote.

She cruised to a second term in 2018, and the council edged in a more progressive direction that year with Sinenci winning his seat, Tamara Paltin taking West Maui and Tasha Kama beating former Mayor Alan Arakawa for the Kahului seat. Kama started out more middle-of-the-road but has slid toward the progressive side while still receiving an endorsement this election by the General Contractors Association of Hawaii, which also backed Cook, U’u-Hodgins, Sugimura and Lee.

The progressive majority solidified in 2020. King, Sinenci, Paltin, Kama and Keani Rawlins-Fernandez all won along with Johnson. That block, with Mike Molina sometimes joining as a sixth vote, pushed through legislation to provide significant subsidies to build more affordable housing and limit land speculation through deed restrictions, increased property taxes on luxury homes and prioritized funding for environmental issues. 

In 2022, King and Molina left the council to run for mayor, finishing third and fifth, respectively, in the primary which Bissen and incumbent Mike Victorino clearly led. While there’s speculation that King is positioning herself to run for mayor again in 2026, she said she’s motivated to seek another two-year term on the council this year in large part to help restore a progressive majority.

She lamented some of the changes the council has made since she left office, such as dissolving the Climate Action, Resilience and Environment Committee she had chaired and used to usher through environmental legislation. The council still has committees for resilience and environment but none specific to climate.

“We’re continuing to overdevelop,” King said. “And the council continues to ignore the community.”

King said she does not agree with Bissen’s housing proposal, and wants to be in a position to do something about it. 

The mayor announced his proposal in May to eliminate 7,167 short-term rentals, roughly half of Maui’s stock, the day after the Legislature passed a bill giving all the counties clearer regulatory power to do so. 

About 2,200 units on the list in West Maui would have to cease operating as short-term rentals by July 1, and the rest of the units — including almost 3,700 in South Maui — would have until Jan. 1, 2026.

While Maui faced a housing crisis before the Aug. 8 fires displaced about 13,000 people, political observers say the historic disaster gave politicians the willpower to take such a “bold step,” as Bissen put it. 

King dismissed the $300,000 study the council wants to do. She views it as just an assessment of the financial outfall like lost tax revenue, and instead called for a plan that identifies how many vacation units should be kept. 

Units in the apartment districts that would be converted to long-term rentals have been used for decades to serve tourists. Most are small, lack parking and would be expensive to rent and maintain, King said, and she’s not convinced that many people really want to live full-time in these places.

She said the county should instead create a list of short-term rentals that make the most sense to convert to long-term housing, and then go forward with that over the next three to five years instead of in the next year or two while also developing more affordable housing on the island. 

“What’s the appropriate number of visitors? Let’s figure that out, and leave a number of condo units available to accommodate that,” King said. “The last thing I want to see is more hotels being built.”

King had $29,068 on hand in campaign cash at the end of the last reporting period, June 30, according to her latest finance report with the state Campaign Spending Commission. That included a $2,000 loan.

She spent $5,940 during the six-month reporting period that began Jan. 1, having raised $21,436 during the same timeframe. Most of the money went toward advertising and T-shirts.

She also spent $941 on sunflower oil giveaways from Pacific Biodiesel Technologies, where she’s a manager and has an ownership stake in the company with her husband. King said it was a way to identify her with the company.

King’s top contributors include Kihei residents Gary Passon, a retired high-tech executive, and his partner Charlene Schulenberg. They co-own the Aloha Aku Inn and Suites on Maui, and each donated $2,000 to King. Bissen had nominated him to the Maui Planning Commission to represent South Maui but his appointment was not confirmed.

She also received the maximum $2,000 from Lili Townsend of Kihei and author Sulara James of Wailuku. She received money from the environmental community as well, including $500 from Susan Bradford, who co-founded the Hawaii Land Trust, and Michael Duberstein, a former board member on the Sierra Club’s Maui Group who’s now an advisory board member of the Maui Tomorrow Foundation.

Cook: ‘It Has The Potential To Wreck Our Economy’

Cook, a 69-year-old retired contractor, first ran for the council in 2020 against King, losing by 12%. 

“They came into office and huli’d the system,” Cook said of the progressives flipping the status quo in 2020.

He questioned the label “progressives,” saying they just seem to be against the conventional way of doing business.

Cook ran again in 2022 against Robin Knox, who ran as part of a slate of progressive council candidates, and won the seat he currently holds by 9%.

Nohelani U’u-Hodgins took Molina’s Makawao seat the same year, beating another progressive candidate, Nara Boone, and tipping the balance of power back the other direction. U’u-Hodgins is the daughter of Bruce U’u, who was the Maui representative of the Hawaii carpenters union, one of the most influential organizations in the state when it comes to elections. 

While the council may disagree on the various issues it tackles, Cook said he appreciates how the body has generally worked well together and remained professional.

“I respect Keani, I respect Shane, I respect Tamara, I’m working on respecting Gabe,” he said.

Cook said he could appreciate where the progressive majority was coming from with some of the legislation they passed, but that he finds most of it overly prescriptive and too restrictive. 

He said he’s opposed to the rampant real estate speculation that’s occurred on Maui over the years, but that 30-year deed restrictions, for instance, can have unintended consequences if someone needs to sell their home suddenly due to a major life event but has had to commit to the county requirement to keep the property affordable for a certain period of time and therefore would likely take a financial hit when selling it early. 

Cook described himself as an environmentalist, noting that he lived off the grid on Maui for 30 years. But he described his race with King as “pretty polar.”

A carpenter by trade, he believes the county needs 25,000 new homes in the next 15 years. He, like King and others, doesn’t see the Aug. 8 fires as having a major influence on the council elections except when it comes to housing.

“It’s turned our housing crisis into a housing catastrophe,” he said.

He said the environmental community often adds further regulatory hurdles that make it harder to build more affordable housing.

Cook, like King, is supportive of the Legislature giving the counties more authority to regulate short-term rentals. He said the Minatoya list of vacation rentals in apartment districts that the mayor has proposed turning into long-term housing should be dealt with because there shouldn’t be so much exception in the county’s zoning. 

But he has reservations about doing it wholesale, as many of the properties are small units with high maintenance costs that he doesn’t want to saddle locals with.

“It has the potential to wreck our economy,” Cook said. 

Instead, he favors up-zoning many of the units to the hotel zoning designation. He said that would avoid lawsuits while maintaining the employment and tax base.

“We as a community and a government need to have a plan explaining to people what that means so you’re not just scaring the crap out of people so they’re worried about losing their livelihoods,” Cook said.

He said the $300,000 the council budgeted for a study is expected to better identify the challenges, opportunities, consequences and costs of phasing out these short-term rentals.

Cook had $28,648 in campaign cash on hand as of June 30, about the same as King, according to his latest campaign finance report. That includes a $5,000 loan.

His biggest contributions came from the Dowling Company, whose employees and founder collectively gave him $6,000. Jack, Mei Lee and Everett Dowling each donated the maximum $2,000 allowed. 

He also received $2,000 apiece from Keoni Gomes, general manager of a local trucking company; Ken Ota, president of Kahului-based Pacific Pipe; and $4,000 split between Tamar Goodfellow and Stephen Goodfellow, who chairs the board of the major contracting company Goodfellow Brothers in Hawaii.

Construction-related unions, including the Local Union 1186 IBEW Pac Fund, the Tapers Local Union 1944 PAC, the Glaziers, Architectural and Glassworks Union 189 AFL and the Painters Local Union 1791 PAC have given a combined $3,500.

Cook said he doesn’t feel beholden to the people donating to his campaign. He said it’s expensive to run a campaign, so some funding is necessary, but that the real work comes from canvassing, knocking on doors and going to “virtually every possible event.”

He views the union support in particular as coming from the members who actually get the work done on Maui when it comes to building the homes or developments people want.

Cook spent $9,223 during the six-month reporting period, mostly on advertising, and raised $32,907 during the same timeframe. 

His expenses include reimbursements for two flights for John White to travel to Maui for meetings as a consultant to his campaign. White is a longtime political operative in Hawaii. He worked for Pacific Resource Partnership, the contractor and carpenters union-funded group that spent millions of dollars to help elect Kirk Caldwell as Honolulu mayor in 2012. He left PRP to set up a Strategies 360 branch in Hawaii in 2016 and is currently their senior vice president.

Cook said he met White during his first election, but did not hire him this time around. He said White volunteered to help his campaign. 

“He helps me refine my thoughts,” Cook said. “I’m not package-able. I’m not a professional politician and never will be.”

He said he’s learned a lot being on the inside serving on the council, noting how “government is clunky by design.”

“Things don’t move as fast as people like but the good side of that is we can’t screw it up really fast either,” he said.

Cook, like King, has not relied on the council’s $78,000 a year salary as his sole source of income. His financial disclosure lists retirement income and work as a construction consultant for LC Hauling as providing $50,000 to $99,999 annually. Cook said he does estimating, form design and other services to help the small Maui-based company grow. 

Beyond the Minatoya list bill and some relatively minor budget considerations, King, Cook and Maui political observers don’t see the Aug. 8 fires shaping this year’s elections as much as may have been expected.

Most point instead to the mayoral race in two years, noting that it was the administration that has really been at the forefront of handling the recovery. The council has provided some enabling legislation, such as flexibility with temporary shelters and expedited permitting, but the real action has been with Bissen and his team. 

“I don’t think fires have played a role in the political scheme,” Mayer said. “People are just tired of all the government stuff and want to get on with their own lives.”

The biggest financial implications of the fires are yet to be determined, especially when it comes to the numerous lawsuits against the county. 

“There are some major unknowns,” Mayer said. “I don’t think the council has set itself up yet to answer those questions; they don’t have the information.”

The real concerns countywide have to do with development, he said, and the deterioration of Maui’s quality of life.

“I’ve lived on Maui 57 years,” Mayer said. “It’s a totally different place.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.