The contentious proposal to spend a share of Oahu rail tax dollars on state transportation projects is still alive in the state Senate after all. It’s one of a host of ideas the chamber might pack into the bill that aims to rescue the island’s beleaguered rail project.

The news came last week as Sen. Lorraine Inouye (D, Kaupulehu-Waimea-North Hilo) announced the latest changes to Senate Bill 1183. The measure would extend Oahu’s general excise tax surcharge as rail faces a renewed budget shortfall of about $3 billion, including financing.

Earlier in the week, Inouye and Sen. Clarence Nishihara (D, Waipahu-Pearl City) had recommended scrapping language in the bill that would send some of Oahu’s rail surcharge proceeds to the state’s highway fund. The senators appeared to be moving away from that proposal, even if the Transportation and Public Safety committees that they chair didn’t vote on the change because that hearing ran late.

After the hearing, however, Senate President Ron Kouchi (D, Kauai-Niihau) asked Inouye and Nishihara to keep that language in the bill. “They were willing to at least keep it in for now,” he said Friday, so that state lawmakers can keep their options open as they seek millions of added dollars for state road repairs and projects.

“We’ve heard a lot of pushback against any kind of tax,” Kouchi added. But the Legislature needs to find a mechanism that everyone can agree on to maintain roads and build transportation projects, he said.

Inouye’s and Nishihara’s committees still haven’t voted on SB 1183. A new draft with a bevy of changes is slated for release today, and a public hearing on the rail-tax measure is scheduled for Wednesday.

Some of the amendments they’re considering include:

>> Extending the GET surcharge another five years to 2032, instead of extending it in perpetuity.

>> Giving neighbor counties another chance to adopt the 0.5 percent GET surcharge, as Oahu did more than a decade ago. (No other county has done this in previous opportunities.) The surcharge wouldn’t include the state’s 10 percent skim. An “unspecified percentage” — likely about 25 percent, according to Inouye — would go into the state’s highway fund.

No Oahu surcharge proceeds would go to counties that decide not to adopt their own surcharge.

An income tax credit would be available for state residents whose income falls below federal poverty guidelines.

The city would have to create a bus-rapid transit lane connecting Central Oahu to the rail system’s Pearl Highlands transit center and create a secondary access road into Leeward Community College.

Senators are also discussing using surcharge funds to support the state’s education, affordable housing and senior care needs, Inouye said.

The Senate committees still aim to replace the state’s 10 percent skim of Oahu’s rail surcharge with an undetermined dollar amount that reflects the actual costs to administer that tax, Inouye said last week.

A five-year extension of the GET for rail granted in 2015 should give the project an additional $1.5 billion, according to the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation. Therefore, another five-year extension of the tax likely would not be enough on its own to fill the project’s current budget hole.

Additionally, the Senate is mulling increases to the fuel tax, vehicle weight tax and vehicle registration fees to help fund state road projects.

The Legislature rejected a similar proposal last year.