House dissidents who toppled former Speaker Calvin Say in favor of Joe Souki were criticized here and elsewhere for not articulating a policy agenda that elevated the coup above a power grab.
With the Legislature at its midway point after last week’s bill crossover, it’s a good time to assess the agenda the former dissidents have set by their actions.
The new House majority has earned a solid B grade with a two-year, $23.1 billion state budget that’s appropriately cautious and with a host of bills to reform elections and make government more transparent.
Windward Oahu Rep. Chris Lee, among the more idealistic of the former dissidents, declared after the House moved the last of its 360 bills to the Senate, "It feels like we accomplished more yesterday for Hawaii than in the preceding four years I’ve been elected put together."
Lee elaborated, "Our major focus is on engaging the community, building accountability and improving the political process. Many of these issues have never moved forward in the past."
The House started by passing a clean repeal of the unpopular Public Land Development Corp. — without the bait-and-switch games played on the Senate side.
The House voted to tighten legislative approval of public land sales and took on the contentious issue of genetically modified foods by requiring labeling for the first time.
House good-government bills would require legislators to file personal financial disclosures at the beginning of the session instead of the end and allow consideration of past poor performance by contractors in state bidding.
The House offered relief to low-income residents by approving an earned-income tax credit that had previously been blocked and offering renewable-energy financing for homeowners and renters.
Election reforms included publicly financed legislative elections, Election Day voter registration, more disclosure of donors by political action committees, a searchable campaign spending website, requiring legislative candidates to live in the districts they run from and barring candidates, employers and unions from interfering with absentee voters.
Calvin Say was respected for fiscal conservatism that kept the budget tight and taxes in check, but new Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke hardly went wild with taxing and spending.
The House took a general excise tax increase off the table and ended a 2009 income tax increase a year earlier than planned. Abercrombie administration requests for a soda tax and higher conveyance taxes were rejected.
Luke’s committee knocked $600 million off the Abercrombie budget, eliminated 931 unfilled state jobs and agreed to pay down the massive public worker health care deficit by $100 million a year.
Other reform opportunities were missed, and negotiations with the Senate lie ahead before any House bills become law, but the Souki-ledmajority deserves credit for pursuing the change it promised.
