On Wednesday, June 24, 2020, Governor David Ige announced a pre-travel testing plan as an alternative to the 14-day quarantine for arriving transpacific passengers. Beginning August 1, individuals who are tested and found to be Covid-19 negative within 72 hours of arrival will not have to quarantine. Continuous trial and error have improved, but not perfected, the quarantine process since its implementation on March 26th. When it was found that people were still renting cars, a policy was established to prevent renting cars to quarantined individuals. When it was recognized that people were freely coming and going from their rooms, hotels adapted by providing a single use room key. Now,
Hawaii did very well to avert a health crisis, and we are fortunate to have experienced the lowest rate of infection and COVID-19 related death in the country. Not surprisingly, this success comes at a remarkably high financial cost. A two to three month lock down was never going to be easy on business activity, personal income, or tax revenues, but our state finances are in far worse shape than most people realize. The Legislature recently amended the state budget to close a projected one billion dollar budget shortfall. Unfortunately, tax revenues have continued to collapse even farther. State general funds needed to pay for government are approximately $677 million per month, and last
