Hawaii's main business-licensing agency is still broken, and it's bad news for anyone trying to start or run a company in the state.

• The Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA) switched to a new Salesforce-based system that introduced bugs and delays, and six weeks later the backlog still has not been fixed.
• Simple paperwork that should take days now takes six to eight weeks, so business owners can't open bank accounts or move money when they need to.
• The governor's office says it reached out to Salesforce for help, but the agency still has not responded with a fix.
• The problem is purely a software and systems failure, not caused by Hawaii's distance or shipping costs, which are usually blamed for high business costs there.
• Because it's an election year, the backlog is becoming a political issue, with concern that if government services keep failing, people will look for workarounds that could cross legal lines.

Outlook: With no fix confirmed yet and an election approaching, pressure is building on state officials to resolve the backlog, but there's no clear timeline for when business filings will return to normal speed.