Mayor Richard Bissen

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen took office in January 2023 after retiring as Chief Judge of the 2nd Circuit Court on Maui. His career of public service spans 34 years, including 17 years of distinguished service on the bench, where he was the first Mental Health Court Judge. He was a founding member of the Maui Drug Court in 2000 when he was Maui County Prosecuting Attorney. He has also served as First Deputy Hawaiʻi Attorney General and Acting Director of the Hawai’i Department of Public Safety. As mayor, his commitment to provide access to government for all residents led him to start Holomua Kākou to bring government to residents of outlying areas of the county. He and members of his administration have traveled to Molokaʻi, Hāna and Lānaʻi to run county government for two days from those remote communities. Mayor Bissen is a 1979 graduate of St. Anthony High School in Wailuku, where his grandson now attends school. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Santa Clara in 1983 before returning home to earn a Juris Doctor Degree from the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 1986. His accomplishments as a judge earned him the prestigious Hawaiʻi Jurist of the Year Award in 2021. In 2022, after five and a half years of studying the healing art of Hoʻoponopono – an art of making things right or restoring relationships, especially in families – Mayor Bissen completed his course of study along with six other haumāna. He and his wife, Isabella Kaʻihikapulani Eleneki Bissen, have three adult daughters and three grandsons.