It’s only 60 days long, but Hawaii’s legislative session this year was a monumental affair featuring some self-reform, historic spending and a return to in-person public participation, all largely in the wake of a bribery scandal, a budget deficit and peak coronavirus infections.
Local political observers give state lawmakers this year high commendation.
“There’s a lot to be happy about,” said Colin Moore, director of the University of Hawaii’s Public Policy Center. “It was a very good time to be a legislator. You had a lot of money to spend. You can help a lot of people, especially coming off of COVID.”
Of course great achievement can be easy when lawmakers who craft the state’s budget have an immense pile of money to allocate for operations, capital improvements, public worker pay raises, tax refunds and investments in long-underfunded areas such as producing homesteads for Native Hawaiians, affordable housing, pension funding and savings.
All these things, and more, got infusions that often were extraordinary this year.
Lawmakers, who passed upward of 320 bills, representing the most in a decade, also found the political will to act on a couple of highly controversial issues: the state’s minimum wage and Mauna Kea management.
The minimum wage bill incrementally increases the current $10.10 hourly minimum to $18 in 2028, which business interests opposed as too high and too fast. For Mauna Kea, a new management authority is to replace the University of Hawaii in an effort to find mutual stewardship respecting the desires of many Hawaiians to protect the mountain as well as continued use of the summit for astronomy.
Unsettling start
When the legislative session began Jan. 19, the outlook and hope for momentous accomplishment wasn’t as bright.
On opening day, proceedings were closed to the public over concerns about spreading COVID-19, which at the time was just about peaking at almost 5,000 new daily cases statewide.
And then, on Feb. 8, the U.S. Department of Justice charged state Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen and former Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English, who retired last year, with accepting bribes to support and kill legislation. Cullen resigned the same day, and both former lawmakers pleaded guilty.
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One bright spot, a really big one, was a general fund revenue forecast from the state Council on Revenues.
Gov. David Ige in December proposed a roughly $1.8 billion spending increase for the fiscal year ending June 30, much of it to restore cuts over the past two years of the pandemic, plus a $1 billion deposit into the state’s “rainy day” Emergency and Budget Reserve Fund.
Ige’s budget plan was based on a Sept. 7 Council on Revenues projection for general fund revenue to grow by $1.8 billion, to $7.7 billion, compared with the council’s year-earlier projection of $5.9 billion.
Lawmakers, however, got the benefit of updated revenue projections as the session progressed. First, the council on Jan. 6 upped its expected general fund take to $8.3 billion, and then to $8.8 billion on March 10.
The windfall was largely driven by federal coronavirus aid and record visitor arrivals from the mainland.
Big spending
With the rosier financial picture presented in January, the House of Representatives proposed giving a record $600 million to the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands for homestead development. And then as the revenue forecast grew, lawmakers sought to address other neglected and daunting obligations.
One such result was state administrators settling a 23-year-old class-action lawsuit against DHHL for $328 million in April with legislative funding.
Lawmakers also passed a bill boosting an annual payment to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs from ceded land income by $6.4 million annually plus $64 million for 10 years of past underpayments.
All told, Native Hawaiian beneficiary funding added up to just over $1 billion.
Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, co-chair of the legislative Native Hawaiian Caucus, described a “historic moment in this historic year” during a Tuesday Senate floor session where a bill to fund the settlement was approved.
“I have to say I’m proud that as stewards of the public trust this year, we in the Legislature can finally put this case behind us, and that with the combined actions that we are taking for the Hawaiian community, send a clear message that we intend to make good on our commitments, and that we will no longer sweep the lingering issues of the past under the rug, but will instead engage and proactively work to solve problems and move forward in the best interest of our entire community.”
For all Hawaii taxpayers, lawmakers approved a tax refund of $300 for individuals earning under $100,000 and each of their dependents, and $100 for those earning $100,000 or more and their dependents.
Tom Yamachika, president of the nonprofit Tax Foundation of Hawaii, said the refund is the biggest in state history after a $125 refund in 1989.
Yamachika credited lawmakers for approving the rebate, expected to cost $250 million.
“When times are good, they should be giving back some of what they took,” he said.
Lawmakers also opted to invest some of the overflowing revenue by directing $500 million to the rainy day fund, $300 million to the state’s underfunded pension fund and $300 million to help developers finance low-income rental housing.
Governor’s view
Ige said Friday that he particularly appreciated the rainy day funding and tax rebate measures.
Even though the rainy day fund contribution was less than he proposed, Ige said it represents a record deposit. And he gives lawmakers credit for improving on his $100 proposed tax rebate.
“I do think that that ended up in a good place,” Ige said. “Everyone had suffered and sacrificed during the pandemic … and should get something back.”
He also said he’s especially proud that the DHHL litigation was resolved. The case, known as Kalima v. State of Hawaii, covered about 2,700 plaintiffs and arose in the aftermath of legislation in which Ige was involved when he was a state senator around 1990.
Overall, Ige called this year’s legislative session “historic” and very productive.
If the governor decides to veto any bills, he must do so by July 12 after notifying the Legislature by June 27 of any bills he might veto.
Moore said the Legislature has a long list of accomplishments that are now headed to the governor compared “to a lot of complaints and bitterness like I heard last session.”
All 76 House and Senate seats are up for election this year due to decennial restricting, but the success of this session will make it harder to challenge incumbents, Moore said.
“It’ll make them harder to defeat,” he said.
And even though the Legislature is often criticized, Moore does not see a wholesale turnover among lawmakers seeking reelection.
“People don’t like the Legislature as a concept,” he said, “but they tend to like their legislator.”
Some dissonance
Not everything this year at the Legislature could be described as a triumph.
For instance, lawmakers passed only seven of 14 bills recommended by a newly formed Commission to Increase Standards of Conduct.
House leadership created the commission Feb. 17 in response to the Cullen and English indictments, with a goal to combat public corruption, improve government transparency and reduce the power of money in politics.
Some lawmakers also flirted with the disdained practice of gutting and replacing the contents of bills without giving the public proper opportunities to comment, despite a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling in November that found the practice unconstitutional.
The ruling amounts to a warning that any new laws created by such bills are subject to being invalidated if someone sues. A couple of bills this year were clear or close examples of gut-and-replace legislation, including one that proposed to create a new commission to distribute $30 million in grants for improving natural resources.
The two bills did not end up passing.
More recently, lawmakers have received some heavy blowback from a bail reform bill they passed that would help people accused of nonviolent crimes stay out of jail while awaiting adjudication. Hawaii law enforcement officials are urging Ige to veto House Bill 1567.
For much of this year’s legislative session, there was internal disagreement among House and Senate leadership surrounding COVID-19 protections.
House Speaker Scott Saiki on Feb. 16 announced that the state Capitol would reopen to the public March 7, and that House members had to attend committee hearings and floor sessions in person. Senate President Ron Kouchi responded with a notice that the Senate had not been consulted about the plan, though it did take effect.
On March 29, policies regarding mask wearing changed at the state Capitol, and became requested in House chambers and rooms but required in Senate chambers and rooms. For the final day of the Legislature Thursday, wearing a mask became optional for senators during their floor session, and nearly all 25 senators opted to go without.
