Former biotech legislator of the year to head House agriculture committee
While the State Senate has become more progressive, this is yet another example of the State House moving in the opposite direction.
Representative Clift Tsuji (House District 2, Keaukaha, Hilo, Panaʻewa, Waiākea) has been named as the Hawaiʻi State House Committee on Agriculture (AGR) chair, leaving advocates hoping to pass new state-level restrictions on pesticides and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) looking at grim prospects for the upcoming legislative session.
Tsuji is unpopular enough with anti-pesticide and anti-GMO activists that a petition asking that he not be appointed chair of the committee collected more than 5,000 signatures.
Agrochemical corporations have been featured in Tsuji’s top five campaign donations list the past four election cycles, dating back to 2008. In 2010, Tsuji—along with former Speaker of the House, Representative Calvin Say (House District 20, St. Louis Heights, Pālolo, Wilhelmina Rise, Kaimukī)—was named “Biotech Legislator of the Year” by the largest biotech trade group in the country, the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Tsuji was serving as the AGR chair then, too, but that was under the leadership of the highly conservative Say.
Now Tsuji is replacing former AGR chair Representative Jessica Wooley (House District 48, Kāneʻohe, Kahaluʻu, Waiāhole), an environmental progressive who became AGR chair last year when Representative Joseph Souki (House District 8, Kahakuloa, Waiheʻe, Waiehu, Puʻuohala, Wailuku, Waikapū) replaced Say as speaker after organizing an unusual coalition that relied on both liberal Democrats and Republicans.
Wooley tried unsuccessfully to get GMO-labeling legislation passed last session, and was friendly toward the pursuit of further regulations on the biotech and agrochemical industries. It seemed likely that the agribusinesses would aggressively campaign to prevent her re-election, but she was tapped by Governor Abercrombie to serve as Director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control (OEQC) instead.
To go from Jessica Wooley to Clift Tsuji on the AGR committee is a major setback for those hoping for further regulations. While the State Senate has given progressive senator Russell Ruderman (Senate District 2, Puna, Kaʻū) the Senate Committee on Agriculture (AGL) and progressive senator Laura Thielen (Senate District 25, Kailua, Lanikai, Enchanted Lake, Maunawili, Waimānalo, Hawaiʻi Kai, Portlock) the Senate Committee on Water and Land (WTL), Tsuji’s appointment is a clear example of a shift backwards toward conservative, corporate-friendly policy and politics in the lower chamber of the Hawaiʻi State Legislature.
State House leadership and committee assignments have experienced none of the liberalizing shake-up that Senate assignments did, with many of the powerful committee chairmanships staying with conservative legislators. On the contrary, the House—which for a brief moment had been pushed out of its conservative comfort zone by the progressive-republican alliance—is now snapping back into its previous corporate alignment.
With progressive senators advancing bills opposite conservative representatives in the same subject matter committees, the potential for legislative inaction is high. And that is exactly what an industry hoping to avoid regulations wants.
But the call continues to grow from members of the public for common sense protections from pesticide exposure, and for a re-focusing of Hawaiʻi agriculture on sustainable, food-production instead of biotech research. The pressure on representatives like Clift Tsuji, and the Souki leadership team, will continue to build as well.
