The way the Legislature ended its 2023 session was a mystery, even to some of the legislators occupying the state Capitol.
Worse yet, the public isn’t clear on what happened and why — and they’re the ones paying the tax bill. Lawmakers are pointing to a $200 million discretionary fund left to Gov. Josh Green to address priorities unresolved in the final budget when the session ended on Thursday.
Exactly how he is to do that — special session or through administrative consultation — was still unclear as this work week began, with no real explanation from key legislative leaders.
What’s plain at this point is that this is the wrong way to finance state business, a rushed process that lacks transparency. Exact details on the budget are not expected to be released for weeks, an uncharacteristic and unacceptable delay.
“Some of the chaos to me was really pretty significant, because you usually don’t have a number of legislators saying, ‘We don’t know what went on,’” said Neal Milner, former University of Hawaii professor and political analyst. He was speaking Monday on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” webcast.
Milner gave the session mixed reviews, acknowledging, for example, the important work done in tax reforms benefiting lower-income households.
He’s right about that; other priorities that got good-faith investments include early education, affordable housing and climate change. There was also some whittling of the backlog in deferred maintenance of state facilities, such as Hawaii island hospitals, though not shrinking the to-do list nearly as much as the governor had hoped.
The messy legislative process, Milner rightly said, was the most unusual aspect.
“I would say, big picture, (the session) went well,” he added. “It went about what you would expect in a state that had a fair amount of money at its disposal … But there were these undercurrents here of anger and disappointment and confusion I think that were a little more significant and loud than they have been in the past.”
The waning days of any session are always frenetic, but it’s confounding why it should be especially so this year, when lawmakers had a large surplus to distribute across budget priorities.
As of opening day, that windfall amounted to roughly $2 billion. That original projection did shrink somewhat, due partly to lower tax receipts and a $164 million anticipated payout in a new public teacher salary agreement, but it was still a healthy infusion.
The unhappiness with the final spending plan, especially among House members, focused largely on what critics say are reductions in Department of Education and University of Hawaii allotments from what Green had requested. There is also the nasty wrestling match over the future of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, which appears to have survived but with no new money appropriated.
Particularly galling is that state Rep. Kyle Yamashita, the House Finance chairman, has not laid out the thinking behind the ultimate budget compromise. He is the one who led most of the eleventh-hour conference committee negotiations that produced the $200 million discretionary-spending compromise — but did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Newly endowed with that powerful position, last held by now-Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, Yamashita must be more forthcoming with information on that final deal now. He should have been up front and communicative even before the session was adjourned, in fact.
And now all eyes turn to Gov. Green, who ought to consider a special session to work out these fiscal wrinkles in public. It’s distressing that the Legislature, the branch that is supposed to wield the power of the purse, has fallen down on that part of its duty this year.
