HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – This New Year’s Eve episode of “Spotlight Now” takes a look at the big headlines from 2024 and what to expect in 2025.
Economic predictions
Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO), provided an outlook of how he thinks the state will do economically going into 2025.
He also gave his prediction and how he thinks lawmakers will govern this next legislative session, saying that because of the recent tax credits and tax breaks that were extended in 2024, lawmakers may take a more conservative approach.
“Going into this session, I really don’t think there’s going to be sort of a sense of enormous urgency to address potential shortfalls coming down the road because of last year’s tax cuts. The council made a forecast in their last in their last council meeting that left us with positive revenue growth every fiscal year going forward, even with the tax cuts.”
Political predictions
Hawaii News Now political analyst Colin Moore gave us a recap of this last election in 2024. He talked about the success the GOP had on a national level, but also here in Hawaii.
“This was a fantastic year for the Republicans. Of course, you know, this is still a heavily Democratic state, but they’re in the best position they’ve been in 20 years,” Moore said.
“They have three Senate seats, nine House seats. They picked up some pretty challenging races. They knocked off a couple of incumbents, even some pretty prominent incumbents. And you can really see that their base of support on the Leeward coast and Ewa Beach has grown,” Moore said.
Moore says this is the year he thinks recreational marijuana could pass the legislature.
On the other side, Honolulu Civil Beat editor Chad Blair says he’s not so sure.
“As liberal and a blue state as we think we are, there’s a very big conservative streak here in Hawaii. It has in part to do with the strong religious elements that are here in many ways. A lot of those Democrats are really conservative, and there’s a reason why the recreational marijuana gets killed year after year after year,” Blair said.
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