New Hawaii program aims to stem foreclosure, from Wall Street to Hilo-Town, Kauai losing sugar mills, Maui looks to small farms, holiday pay due Hawaii County workers on leave, more news from the islands

Hilo protest (c) 2011 All Hawaii News

About 100 residents in Hilo joined like-minded citizens across the country Monday as they stood up and showed their support for the Occupy Wall Street campaign that began three weeks ago in New York City. Tribune-Herald.

Over 4,800 miles from New York City on the Big Island of Hawaii, residents inspired to demonstrate in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement lined roads on either side of the moku. Big Island Video News.

(c) 2011 All Hawaii News

A small group of what some bystanders described as "graying hippies" gathered outside the Merrill Lynch building in Hilo, Hawaii, on Monday afternoon to back the "Occupy Wall Street" movement that has been building and spreading to other cities since it started in New York City two weeks ago. Hawaii Reporter.


They've paid their debt to society, but many Hawaii ex-convicts are now having trouble finding a job to pay off their other debts. KITV4.

Hawaii on Monday introduced a mortgage foreclosure dispute resolution program that will allow owner-occupants with homes in nonjudicial foreclosure to have the opportunity to meet directly with their lenders. Pacific Business News.

Local homeowners facing foreclosure now have options based on a recently enacted law. Hawaii Public Radio

Homeowners facing foreclosure now have another way to try to stay in their homes. KHON2.

Daniel Inouye's Guide To Getting Elected. Civil Beat.

Last week, consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch released documents obtained from Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie’s office that shed light on the governor’s recent position reversal in support of a controversial fish farming bill. Hawaii Independent.

The number of adult community schools would shrink to four from 11, and students would have to pay $20 or more for classes that are now free, under a plan to save adult education services that would also require the state to restore more than half of the $5 million in funding cut from the program for next year. Star-Advertiser.

Oahu

Waianae-area residents still can't be certain whether seafood they harvest off their shore is safe from dangerous levels of arsenic and lead. Civil Beat.

Buoys went up this morning to keep swimmers at bay while city crews remove hazardous pieces of the Natatorium's aging sea wall. Hawaii News Now.

T.J. Maxx, the national discount retailer, will fill the second floor of the Ward Village Shops, and Ward Centers will get a $3 million face lift as the property owner studies plans for a major redevelopment of Kakaako. Star-Advertiser.

Hawaii
A South Kona property owner's protest of a county land acquisition has hit the end of the road. West Hawaii Today.

Hawaii County employees on unpaid leave -- even for disciplinary reasons -- must nonetheless be paid for holidays, the Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled last week. West Hawaii Today.

State and county officials used federal funds to put new numbers in an old North Kohala agricultural park plan that could be exempted from county zoning and subdivision rules. West Hawaii Today.

University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program will close its Kailua-Kona office by Nov. 1. West Hawaii Today.

Maui

Over the last five years, an independent contractor who annually inspected a troubled state affordable housing project on Maui made only passing references to the ever-rising vacancy rate at the complex, according to copies of the inspection reports. Hawaii Reporter.

While there may be fewer examples of the traditional, larger family farm on Maui than there once were, more people apparently are specializing in growing vegetables and breeding exotic birds and other livestock on a small scale. Maui News.

Kauai

The future doesn’t look sweet for Kekaha and Lihu‘e sugar mills. The asbestos-laden ghosts of a bygone plantation era are slated for destruction, more than a decade after the end of their productive lives. Garden Island.

Pioneer Hi-Bred opens doors to the public. Garden Island.

Beach ownership at issue, changes in H1N1 vaccine rules, North Shore land for sale and other news

The Intermediate Court of Appeals is scrutinizing a Hawaii law passed in 2003 that declares that new, naturally formed beach land above the high-water mark should belong to the public -- not adjoining private property owners.

In response to mounting criticism about how the short supply of swine flu vaccine is being distributed in Hawai'i, the state will change the way it doles out the vaccine.

Nearly 100 acres of agricultural land next to the Turtle Bay Resort on O'ahu's North Shore are headed for a sealed-bid sale, four years after a Florida-based investment firm bought the oceanfront property for $2 million with plans to subdivide it for potential residential use.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka will be holding 15 information briefings from December 1 to December 8 to explain changes in the way federal workers in Hawaii will be paid.

Honolulu police said officers opened fire on a car that as accelerating toward them on Saturday, marking the third officer-involved shooting in a month.

A North Shore surf instructor on Saturday rescued a family visiting from the Mainland who had been swept out to sea while bodyboarding at Hanalei Bay.

Longtime Hana community leader, Realtor and former Maui News community correspondent Carl Lindquist and his wife, Rae, have been reported missing after the wreckage of their car was found in a Hana streambed, police said Saturday evening.

Hundreds of children and children-at-heart lined the streets of downtown Hilo Saturday evening to catch their first glimpse of Santa Claus.

On a Sunday in October, three Waimea men gather at 7 a.m. on private grazing land in South Kohala to hunt goats. For them it is partly foraging and partly tradition.

Ulupalakua Ranch owner Pardee Erdman has donated more than 11,000 acres to the Maui Coastal Land Trust.

When Debbie Hecht suggested to the Hawaii County Charter Commission that it should add an amendment making the Two Percent for Public Lands law a part of the County Charter, she got less than she bargained for.

Substitute teachers seek pay parity

More than five years after suing the state to get better pay for substitute teachers, attorneys will press their case for back pay, this time to the Intermediate Court of Appeals.

Three judges of the court -- Corrine Watanabe, Daniel Foley and Katherine Leonard -- will hear oral arguments at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Supreme Court courtroom in Aliiolani Hale.

Paul Alston, an attorney representing the substitute teachers seeking more than $25 million in back pay, is fighting for retroactive raises after Circuit Judge Karen Ahn ruled in 2006 that the state Department of Education failed to comply with a 1996 law requiring it to pay substitutes the same daily rate as fulltime teachers.

The Legislature last year passed, and Gov. Linda Lingle signed, a bill that requires the DOE to give substitute teachers the same across-the-board raises that regular teachers, under collective bargaining, get each year. Now it’s just the back pay that’s at issue.

Among other things, the Circuit Court ruled that the state is liable to the substitute teachers for some but not all of the back pay sought by the teachers but doesn’t have to pay interest. The state is liable for contract claims, but is immune from direct claims under sovereign immunity, according to the court.

But the Circuit Court also refused to expand the rights to part-time employees, sparking an appeal. Attorneys for the substitute teachers also appealed rulings on statutes of limitations, tolling, sovereign immunity, pre-judgment interest, class certification and intervention. The state challenges the circuit court's orders allowing a third amended complaint, finding a waiver of sovereign immunity.