Pat Gozemba, a retired UH professor, remembers when her students had cars that broke down—cars that they relied on for transportation to college and to their jobs. Some of them had to drop out of school because they couldn’t afford the repairs.

Pat points out that tax breaks in Hawaiʻi go to the wealthy, who pay only 8 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while low-income earners pay 13 percent. She thinks, “This is totally unfair.”