First, a vocabulary lesson. It’s not often that one encounters the word “adscititious”: it means “forming an addition or supplement; not integral or intrinsic.”
That, evidently, is how state legislators see the Hawaii Tourism Authority — which, at the 11th hour, finally received its annual operations budget of $60 million, via House Bill 1147. The final version of the bill, relating to the state budget, self-proclaims that it “shall be known and may be cited as the Adscititious Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022.”
HB 1147 originally was intended to fund a bevy of non-HTA capital improvement projects. But the overhauled bill, passed by the Legislature Thursday, was gutted to primarily provide for HTA’s budget from state general revenues, plus $28.5 million out of the convention center enterprise special fund, for fiscal year 2022-23.
Despite relief in its goal of funding HTA, HB 1147 is a blatant example of “gut and replace,” a dubious maneuver used by lawmakers that replaces the contents and original intent of a bill, with unrelated legislation. Such nontransparency and circumvention of public participation were legally called into question by the Hawaii Supreme Court in a ruling just six months ago.
So Lesson Two: The legally shaky gut-and-replace process should not be used as the funding mechanism for such a key entity as HTA. This is the focal agency charged with guiding tourism, Hawaii’s main economic industry. While it’s true that HTA in the past had been living large with too little accountability, today’s HTA is evolving with a better balance between tourism marketing and destination management/sustainability. It’s a dual-mission reset that HTA CEO John De Fries seems to have taken to heart — one that should be supported by lawmakers, not undermined by political push and pull.
As recently as 10 days ago, HTA’s $60 million budget was up in the air, its fate held in either House Bill 1785 or Senate Bill 775. But both bills stalled with no lawmaker consensus: HB 1785 sought to reorganize HTA and micromanage; SB 775 itself was a gut-and-replace creature, morphing from a hotel-room tax bill into a funding vehicle for HTA operations, plus a proposed new Natural Resource Management Commission to dole out $30 million in grants.
A final lesson: Hawaii is now rebounding from two-plus years of pandemic. HTA, under its enlightened two-pronged mission, is necessary as tourism competition heats up globally. Gut-and-replace allocation is a poor way to budget for an agency whose success or failure could have dire consequences for Hawaii’s overall economy.
