Christina Jedra

1 week ago | civilbeat.org | Christina Jedra

Government watchdogs think the European field trip is a bad look, but city officials insist there’s nothing wrong with it. A company that just signed ano-bid contract with Honolulu’s motor vehicle office is hoping to send the agency’s director on an all-expenses-paid trip to Gdańsk, Poland next month.

1 week ago | civilbeat.org | Christina Jedra

Thecounty says it’s doing its job faster, but that’s not yet translating to faster permits for property owners. Teresa Parsons was tired of waiting for her building permit. It had been 400 days of delays, reviews and more delays. Her Kaneohe homebuilding plans seemed to be in a slow-motion ping pong match between Honolulu’s permitting department and her architect. Fed up, Parsons asked the county for a copy of her project routing slip to see where the chokepoints were. What she saw shocked her.

1 week ago | newsfromthestates.com | Christina Jedra

Teresa Parsons was tired of waiting for her building permit. It had been 400 days of delays, reviews and more delays. Her Kaneohe homebuilding plans seemed to be in a slow-motion ping pong match between Honolulu’s permitting department and her architect. Fed up, Parsons asked the county for a copy of her project routing slip to see where the chokepoints were. What she saw shocked her. For 208 business days, the slip showed, her plans were with her own architect.

2 weeks ago | civilbeat.org | Christina Jedra

The hit show debuted on Maui in 2021. Filming has since moved offshore but editing work done on Kaua‘i allows for tax benefits. The third season of “The White Lotus” was filmed at the Four Seasons in Koh Samui, Thailand, a luxury resort more than 6,000 miles from the Hawaiian Islands. But Hawai‘i taxpayers are set to pay out more than $550,000 to support the show’s production, which airs its season finale Sunday on Max.

3 weeks ago | civilbeat.org | Christina Jedra |Blaze Lovell

House and Senate leadership have little to say about the subject of a federal bribery investigation giving one of their 2022 colleagues $35,000. A growing chorus of good government advocates want the Legislature to increase accountability within its own ranks following a Civil Beat story about an unknown Hawaiʻi lawmaker receiving a $35,000 donation amid an ongoing federal corruption investigation.