State Sen. Josh Green edges closer to run for lieutenant governor

State Sen. Josh Green already laid out an ambitious project he would take on as lieutenant governor.

The only thing he hasn’t quite done yet is announce he’s running.

Green, a Kona/Ka‘u Democrat, came a hairsbreadth from actually announcing Wednesday, when he was in Hilo for a meeting with Mayor Harry Kim.

While the office of the lieutenant governor has very few duties — handling name changes is the duty most cited — Green thinks the office is what you make it, and he plans to make it more useful. The lieutenant governor is in the perfect position to tackle a big issue such as homelessness, he said.

“Each lieutenant governor has to find their own way,” Green said. “I’ve already found my own way.”

Green plans to undertake a statewide listening tour after the legislative session ends in early May to get feedback from the public. He’ll make a decision after discussing it with his family, he said.

Kim said the two had a wide-ranging conversation that touched on many legislative issues, including homelessness.

Tops on Green’s priority list is obtaining a Medicaid waiver to allow the state to treat homelessness as a medical condition as a way to stem the increasing expense of repeated emergency room visits for homeless people.

The only physician in the state Senate, Green is chairman of the Human Services Committee.

He wants to restructure the approximately $2 billion the state already spends on Medicaid, which pays for medical services for residents in poverty or with disabilities. By allowing Medicaid money to also provide basic shelter, it could end some of the expensive crisis medicine — for ambulances and emergency rooms, for example — and use the funding more efficiently.

It could reduce the incidence of lost medications and chronic staph infections and respiratory problems for people living on the street, he said.

A full 60 percent of Medicaid funding in the state is used by just 3.6 percent of the Medicaid population, he said.

Green is getting national attention for his out-of-the-box plan, which he said he wrote on the back of an envelope while sitting in the ready room at the Kohala Hospital, where he works weekend shifts as an emergency room doctor.

“I had a copy of the budget in my knapsack,” he said. “It just kind of all clicked.”

In fact, he said, the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the highest-ranking member of each branch of the military — plans to meet in Honolulu next month to learn more about the potential program.

With very little competition for his legislative seat, Green has amassed a $503,839 war chest as of Feb. 1, the latest filing deadline with the state Campaign Spending Commission. He hasn’t scheduled any fundraisers this year, but he plans to do so, he said.

Green said he’s gotten serious about running after talking with Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui, who has publicly said he’s “pretty certain” he will leave the post, perhaps to run for Maui mayor, according to his comments in the Maui News.

If Tsutsui leaves before the end of his term, the post would be offered first to Senate President Ron Kouchi, then to House Speaker Joe Souki and then to Attorney General Doug Chin, under the terms of the Hawaii State Constitution.

The office, along with the governor’s office, is up for election next year.

Green, 47, will have been in the Legislature 14 years when his current term ends.

If he gives up his Senate seat to run for lieutenant governor, Green could join a crowded field, political analyst Colin Moore, associate professor of political science and director of the Public Policy Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said earlier this year. Names also popping up as possibilities are term-limited Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa, term-limited Kauai Mayor Bernard Carvalho and state Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Jill Tokuda, among others.

“I believe in taking risks. I think the way you actually grow is to get outside your comfort zone,” Green said. “I could win or I could lose, but I’m not going to sit still.”

Email Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.