Kauanoe Batangan is sworn into office as a Maui County Council member by Hawaii Second Circuit Court Judge Kirsten Hamman on Monday. Gary Kubota/The Maui News

Kauanoe Batangan was sworn into office as a Maui County Council member Monday morning, saying he was honored to have been selected by his late predecessor, Tasha Kama, to serve out the remainder of her term.

“I’m very grateful for the opportunity to do so,” Batangan said after the ceremony.

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen appointed Batangan to succeed Kama, who died on Oct. 26, for the remainder of her term that runs through 2027. Before her death, Kama had expressed her wish to have Batangan be her successor.

Before the ceremony, Batangan, 36, described himself as similar to Kama, an independent thinker who votes for what he believes is right.

The former transportation executive said his agenda includes taking care of the elderly and children in Maui County. He added that he had returned home to help care for his grandmother.

“I was very appreciative of the type of services that we got from the county and from our nonprofit partners that helped make it easier,” he said. “I also have two young kids of my own and want to make sure that we have a future that allows them to not just stay here but to thrive here.”

Kauanoe Batangan

Asked about the recent enactment of Bill 9, which will phase short-term rentals out of Maui’s apartment districts over the next three to five years, Batangan said the bill passed with the understanding that the County Council would take up recommendations from a temporary investigative group on how to improve the bill.

He said he would have preferred that the County Council waited to enact Bill 9, and he’s willing to consider proposed changes, which include creating new zoning for some properties that would allow them to continue being used as short-term rentals.

The passage of Bill 9 has prompted some owners at the Kaanapali Royal to file a lawsuit in Second Circuit Court on Dec. 19.

Before his council appointment, Batangan, a 2008 graduate of Kamehameha Schools Maui, served as the executive director of the Maui Metropolitan Planning Organization, coordinating federal highway and other transit projects on Maui since September 2024.

Batangan was formerly the deputy director of the county’s Department of Transportation from January 2023 through September 2024.

He also was the division lead in the newly created Office of Recovery from September 2023 through August 2024 and served as an executive assistant to Maui County Council Vice Chair Yuki Sugimura from 2018 to 2019.

Batangan has obtained master’s degrees in public administration from Columbia University and in public policy from the University of Tokyo and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Stanford University.

He lives in Kahului with his wife and two young children.

Kama was first elected to the County Council in 2018. She was also the presiding officer pro tempore and the chair of the Housing and Land Use Committee.

On Monday, the Maui County Council appointed Batangan as chair of the Government Relations, Ethics, and Transparency Committee and vice chair of the Budget, Finance, and Economic Development and the Housing and Land Use committees.

Nohelani U’u-Hodgins, who had been chair of the Government Relations, Ethics, and Transparency Committee, was appointed chair of the Housing and Land Use Committee.