Following an eleventh-­hour scramble, Hawaii Tourism Authority emerged from the 2022 legislative session with a fully intact $60 million annual budget.

Lawmakers unanimously consented to House Bill 1147 during a floor vote held Thursday shortly before adjournment of the session. It will now be sent to Gov. David Ige for consideration.

The bill, which switches the source of HTA’s budget to general funds, sets an additional $28.5 million expenditure ceiling for the Hawai‘i Convention Center’s enterprise special fund and $100,000 for University of Hawaii tropical agriculture pursuits.

HTA President and CEO John De Fries thanked state lawmakers for “appropriating an operating budget for the Hawaii Tourism Authority and for entrusting us with the important work of destination management and visitor education.” He added that the state agency will work “diligently on behalf of our communities and visitor industry to help restore jobs, strengthen our economy and to malama our island home.”

Sen. Kurt Fevella (R, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point) rose in support of HB 1147 during the floor vote. “We have previously said the visitor industry is an important sector of Hawaii’s economy, and in fact it has provided a significant share of the state tax revenue to provide employment and opportunity in kamaaina families,” Fevella said.

“There are also challenges associated with this industry. There’s community concerns about the need to protect our cultural and our native resources. Hawaii Tourism Authority is responsible for changing the course of making a focus to destination management and visitor education. Appropriation will help HTA with the ability to show progress” toward implementing its “Destination Management Action Plans” for each county.

The coming fiscal year’s state funding for HTA remained in limbo for much of the legislative session. House and Senate conferees left HTA funding out of the final version of the state’s $17 billion supplemental budget, and legislative conflict over alternative bills put the agency’s financial outlook in jeopardy.

Before signing off on the final draft of HB 1147, the Senate had favored House Bill 1785, which would have reorganized HTA. The House had favored Senate Bill 775, which funded HTA without strings but sought to create an additional agency, a “Natural Resource Management Commission,” with an appropriation of $30 million.

After last week’s deadline for fiscal bills, lawmakers amended HB 1147 to include HTA funding. The last-minute changes to what was originally a “capital improvements bill” could still trigger a challenge about whether it tests the limits of a recent “gut and replace” court ruling. The ruling requires that when a bill is stripped of its original content and replaced with something entirely different, the move must be followed by a set of readings for the amended measure.