HomeMy WebLinkAboutAnderson, Karen
Tsuneda, Kaci
From:Karen Anderson <123karen@earthlink.net>
Sent:Monday, September 14, 2026 11:06 AM
To:Council Testimony
Subject:Bill 147
I am writing to express my dismay at the County Council’s dysfunctional and reckless process of crafting
legislation (Bill 98/Ordinance 25-50/Bill 147, etc.) to regulate hosted vacation rentals.
The cart-before-the-horse approach has left countless hosted vacation-rental owners on Hawaii Island
twisting in the wind for months on end waiting for the next shoe to drop instead of providing absolute
clarity about the potential fate of their businesses. Many uncertain owners had already blocked out their
calendars for all bookings after December 2025 when the registration was slated to begin, only to find
out that it would be pushed to April 2026. They then blocked their calendars for bookings after April 2026,
only to find out that the date had been pushed forward to July 2026, only to find out again that the date
has been pushed to September 2026, with a grace period until December, and who knows how much
longer after that. How much lost income has resulted from this needless chaos inflicted on legitimate
vacation rental operators who’ve been in business for decades?
It is inconceivable that the County Council (Heather Kimball) treats legitimate vacation-rental owners as
though their current livelihoods and incomes are of zero concern to her. The constant shifting of the
goalposts from “this is only a simple registration” to morphing into potentially all of the restrictions and
requirements of the defunct Bill 121 (and then dubiously reclassifying all hosted rentals as B&Bs when
clearly they are not so as to skirt around the zoning issues) has resulted in a chilling effect that has put
many owners out of business in the interim. How is the public expected to make informed decisions
about whether to continue operating their hosted vacation rentals when there has been a complete lack
of transparency about what is to come next, including “standards of operations,” joint & several liability,
the legality of the B&B designation (see Health Dept. codes, etc), and a host of other important missing
details yet to be decided upon? How can the County begin a registration process prior to codifying all
pertinent issues? The piecemeal back-and-forth process is a stain on the County Council and should not
be tolerated.
This is no way to craft ordinances. Unless and until all issues are addressed in a single bill in the entirety,
this cart-before-the-horse approach to crafting a vacation rental bill is inept at best and duplicitous at
worst. The horse in this instance has turned out to be a Trojan Horse that has put hundreds of hosted
operators out of business. Ms. Kimball’s half-baked policymaking approach has harmed legal, legitimate
vacation-rental operators and continues to do so.
I urge the Council to repeal and/or table these reckless measures in their entirety, including the
registration ordinance, until saner heads prevail.
Karen Anderson
Cell: (808) 936-2668
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