CLAIM: A video shows Hawaii Gov. Josh Green saying he wants the state to acquire land destroyed in the Maui wildfire so that it can turn the town of Lahaina into a “smart city.”
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video shows Green telling reporters on Saturday, during a visit to Lahaina with FEMA, that he won’t allow the town to become unaffordable for locals and that he is looking into how the state might preserve land in the community.
THE FACTS: While rescue teams are still searching for people missing following the deadly Maui wildfires that started on Aug. 8, social media posts are misrepresenting comments Green made during his recent visit to Lahaina.
“Governor Green wants to turn Lahaina Maui into state lands,” reads one Instagram post that shared the video. “All planned for smart city.”
A similar post on TikTok had about 3.8 million views as of Friday.
These posts draw on far-right tropes that global-minded organizations such as the United Nations and the World Economic Forum are plotting to forcibly move people into futuristic “smart” or “15-minute” cities where their freedoms will be severely curtailed by advanced technologies.
In reality, “smart cities” generally refer to communities that use new technologies to improve operations, while “15-minute cities” are compact communities in which everyday needs are within walking distance. They aren’t designed to restrict people’s movements or freedoms.
The clips shared in the posts are from a news segment aired by KHON-TV, as part of its coverage of the Lahaina visit on Saturday, in which Green discusses his hopes for the community’s land. But he does not suggest turning Lahaina into a smart city, nor does he even mention the term.
“I’m already thinking about ways for the state to acquire that land so we can put it into workforce housing, to put it back into families, or to make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial to people who were lost,” he says in the segment.
Green continues: “We don’t want this to become a clear space where then, yes, people from overseas just come and decide they’re going to take it. The state will take it and preserve it first.”
At a press conference on Wednesday, Green spoke about how he instructed the attorney general to work toward a moratorium on land transactions in Lahaina as a way to prevent people in Hawaii from being victimized by opportunistic buyers.
“People have wondered about land,” Green said. “That’s come up on several occasions. My intention, from start to finish, is to make sure no one is victimized from a land grab. That we do not suffer predation against those who are suffering.”
Adam Weintraub, a spokesperson for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency with knowledge of the situation, told The Associated Press he has not seen Green publicly make any comments around developing a specialized city like those mentioned in the posts.
Asked about the claims, the governor’s office directed the AP to a video of Wednesday’s press conference and two press releases it released — one that urged homeowners to be cautious about unsolicited offers for their properties and another about relief that is available to them.
The Maui wildfires have killed at least 111 people and are the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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