HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-06-25 Karen Anderson Opposition Testimony
From: Karen Anderson
To: Planning LPC Testimony
Subject: Bill 147
Date: Thursday, June 25, 2026 2:51:39 PM
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 ordinance 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, 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
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, 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
Captain Cook, HI