Reefer sadness: There’s been a lot of attention to cannabis measures at the Hawaii Legislature, where bills have advanced further than in sessions past. Senate Bill 3335 would have allowed recreational use of marijuana for people age 21 and older.

But on Tuesday House Finance Chair Kyle Yamashita killed it, saying that he would not hear the bill in spite of lots of people contacting his office to tell him he should.

“Due to numerous concerns regarding the implementation of the bill, the House has decided against further deliberation in the House Finance Committee,” he said via press release. “This decision is strengthened by the prevailing ‘no’ votes from committee members expressed on the House floor.”

“We recognize that now is not the opportune time for its implementation, as we navigate the challenges of managing the largest wildfire recovery efforts in Hawaii’s history.”

The Sunshine Blog saw that one coming, of course.

However, still alive and possibly headed to conference committee later this month to work out House and Senate differences is Senate Bill 2487, which would change the minimum amount of pot necessary for a person to commit the offense of promoting a detrimental drug in the second degree from 1 ounce to 30 grams (about 2 grams more).

The legislation also increases the amount of marijuana involved in the offense of promoting a detrimental drug in the third degree from 3 grams or less of marijuana to 15 grams or less. 

In related legislation, House Bill 1595 would set up a state-initiated expungement process of arrest records concerning some marijuana offenses, but Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz has not yet scheduled it for a hearing in the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Unless that happens this week, it’s dead, too.

Election integrity: Mis-, dis- and malinformation are expected to be off the charts in the election this year. That’s why the Hawaii State Elections Office added a new section last month to its official website called Rumors Vs. Facts.

Here’s an excerpt:

 “We developed it late last year to help get accurate information for the public in an effort to proactively combat the spread of MDM,” explained Nedielyn Bueno, voter services specialist at the elections office.

In addition to answering questions about voter fraud, Rumors Vs. Facts also addresses voter registration, mailed ballots, processing ballots, election-day voting and election results. Whether the website will convince all the looneys out there is an open question, though.

Term limits, reconsidered: Hawaii County Councilman Holeka Inaba is advocating for a charter amendment this fall that would double the length of council members’ terms in office from two to four years.

“At the same time, it would reduce the number of consecutive allowable terms from four to three, changing the maximum consecutive tenure for a council member from eight to 12 years,” the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports.

The amendment, which is slated to be considered Wednesday, also would allow any member reelected in 2024 to serve a four-year term and to run for two additional consecutive four-year terms “regardless of how many terms they already have served.”

Inaba believes the public is not served by swapping out council members every two years. Voters appear to think otherwise, though: The Trib points out that a similar proposal for four-year terms was rejected in a 2020 charter amendment.

Unthinkable: Jay Fidell is cutting back on production of the nonprofit “ThinkTech Hawaii,” which began on Hawaii Public Radio nearly a quarter of a century ago and today has its own website and YouTube channel. The main reason: money, or as Fidell said in a press release, the inability to raise funds “sufficient to carry on its production schedule as before.”

“We regret the necessity of taking this step, especially as our country is engaged in the most divisive election since the Civil War,” said Fidell. “We should all be following that, along with so many other troubling state, national and global issues, but given the difficulties of nonprofit fundraising these days, we will nevertheless have to cut back and leave it to other media to otherwise address these issues and the sea changes likely to affect us all.”

The Blog could not have said it better, so it won’t try. Except the part about the Civil War.

By the numbers: For those Blog fans who are keeping track, here’s the latest official count of the growing number of lawsuits filed against Hawaiian Electric Co. et al over the deadly and destructive Aug. 8 Maui wildfires, as told to the Public Utilities Commission by subsidiary Maui Electric Co. last week.

• 131 complaints naming MECO and HECO and most of those cases also name various other defendants including, by MECO’s count: Hawaii Electric Light Co. (128 complaints), Hawaiian Electric Industries (131 complaints), Maui County (110 complaints), State of Hawaii and related entities (109 complaints), Kamehameha Schools (88 complaints), telecommunications companies (79 complaints) and private landowners and developers (7 complaints).

Most of the cases are being heard in the Second Circuit Court on Maui but a few are in Oahu’s First Circuit and a couple are still in federal court.

Hundreds of people are plaintiffs in the 131 cases.

Meanwhile, the last The Blog heard (which was also late last week) only 21 people had filed applications with the state’s One Ohana Fund which will pay $1.5 million to each of the families of people killed in the Lahaina fire if they agree not to pursue damages through a lawsuit.