In its first forecast following the deadly Aug. 8 Lahaina fire, the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization on Thursday proposed the creation of a new entity to oversee what comes next for Lahaina over the years to come — to be created by the state Legislature.

UHERO’s proposal will only add to the pressure on state legislators over how they respond — and fund — Hawaii’s response to one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history, which killed at least 115 people.

If the Legislature takes the responsibility for creating what UHERO calls a “local post-disaster governance system,” it likely will only increase demands that Lahaina survivors be responsible for their future at a time of distrust of the state and federal government, said political analyst Neal Milner.

So far, the 76-member state Legislature has not been the focus of widespread finger-pointing following the fire. But that will change if the Legislature follows UHERO’s recommendation to create a new entity to oversee what happens next in Lahaina, Milner said.

UHERO proposed a new “authority” for Lahaina modeled after Japan’s Reconstruction Agency created after the Fukushima earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011; New Zealand’s Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority after earthquakes devastated the city of Christchurch in 2010 and 2011; and similar authorities around the world in response to unprecedented disasters.

The idea would be to create a centralized agency that can cut through red tape and speed up recovery, UHERO said.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Milner said. “But this is uncharted waters, and the devil is in the details. The challenge is whether you can create an institution that, by its existence, gets around some of the same things they’re worried about in the first place. How are you somehow going to win the trust of people that don’t trust you? … Whether you can design a process, a participatory process, that cuts through the issue of expertise versus community input — all with the pressures of tourism, development, housing — remains to be seen. These are big-ticket items. The Legislature has got to be feeling pressure. But that doesn’t mean they can come up with something productive. But nobody should be spared (pressure), because everybody has to be involved.”

State Sen. Lynn DeCoite (D, East and Upcountry Maui-Molokai-Lanai) runs a small business and chairs the Senate Energy, Economic Development and Tourism Committee, and said that fire survivors just want honest answers to basic questions, including from business owners “who just want to know if we’ll be here tomorrow or whether or not we should just pack up and move.”

Both for businesses that survived and were destroyed, federal officials will not even provide basic responses that there may be health or liability issues in the way, adding to government mistrust, DeCoite said.

So entrusting the state Legislature to create a new authority to cut through red tape, mistrust and frustration could be a hard sell, she said.

No such authority was needed to get Hawaii through the COVID-19 pandemic, DeCoite said, “so it’s like we’d be reinventing the wheel.”

Two of the 16 authors of UHERO’s forecast — Executive Director Carl Bonham and associate UHERO professor Colin Moore — said Thursday that the Legislature should meet in special session to create a special authority for Lahaina, or at least get it done by the end of the 2024 legislative session.

Having a new entity created by the Legislature gives it “more authority,” Moore said, rather than through an emergency proclamation from Gov. Josh Green.

Green issued an emergency housing proclamation before the Lahaina fire to address Hawaii’s ongoing housing shortage. But some skeptical members of the public have linked the housing effort to the catastrophe — criticizing the Build Beyond Barriers Working Group during its first public meeting on Tuesday over its very existence, powers and process.

Bonham serves on the Build Beyond Barriers Working Group and said a new authority needs to be created for Lahaina because “from a fiscal side, this is something Maui County can’t do all on its own, the state can’t do all on its own. … Everybody feels a sense of urgency.”

Thursday’s UHERO report discussed the years-long need for outside mental health care workers to help children and adults.

For all of the workers who will need to fly into Maui over the next several years for health care, cleanup, reconstruction and other needs, Bonham said they will need to take up hotel rooms, short-term vacation rentals, potential tiny-home kauhale communities or even “containers” while stalled housing projects need to be pushed into reality.

“I think we’re going to need everything,” Bonham said. “We’ve got to accelerate housing construction across the entire island.”

The UHERO report listed the many challenges ahead for Maui.

“You can’t overestimate the complexities,” Bonham said.

The short- and long-term problems, according to Moore, Bonham and the UHERO study, include:

>> Numbers that are “staggering,” including 1,500 rooms for visitor accommodations and short-term vacation rentals among the destroyed buildings; $70 million per month in revenue in accommodation, food serv­ice, retail sales and other categories from Lahaina businesses; and 8,500 West Maui people whose employment was affected.

>> Not being able to track an expected departure of Maui residents. “There will be outmigration,” Bonham said. “There’s no doubt there will be outmigration.”

>> The loss of Maui tourists adding up to $13 million a day that’s not going into Maui’s economy.

“Private and public support for Maui will help mitigate economic activity losses for those directly affected by the fires, but other than regular unemployment benefits, the collateral damage from lost visitor spending will not be replaced by federal support,” according to UHERO. “With 45,000 fewer visitors on the island and the dire needs of their Lahaina neighbors, many hotel rooms and short-term rental properties are now being used by displaced residents and emergency personnel. However, the spending of these groups differs substantially from that of visitors, and establishments relying on tourist spending will continue to experience a dramatic decline in sales until visitors return in greater numbers.”

>> Roughly 2,000 homes in Lahaina were lost in the fire, representing 3% of Maui’s entire residential housing stock.

>> Surging claims for unemployment benefits. “We expect that the unemployment rate on Maui will jump to as high as 10% in coming months before visitor spending returns and the coming wave of federal support and building activity occurs.”

>> The loss of tax revenues for the state and county. “We estimate the loss in Transient Accommodations Tax and General Excise Tax revenue for the state from visitors to Maui to be about $30M for August and these revenue losses will continue each month that visitors are missing. For the County, we estimate TAT revenues down by about $5M per month and property tax revenue down by at least $10.5M for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.”

>> According to Maui County property data, the value of structures within the burned area totaled $880 million, with most of this value in structures that were completely destroyed. Residential structures within the burned area were valued at $550 million. And the cost to replace these structures may be significantly greater than their assessed value, because many older, lightly constructed dwellings must be replaced with pricier new structures.

>> “Fast tracking and expanding projects that are already in the Maui County Comprehensive Affordable Housing Plan is imperative for accelerating recovery and preventing a damaging increase in Maui’s already extreme housing burden,” UHERO said. In addition, Maui’s “onerous” housing restrictions should be relaxed and the process streamlined for development of multifamily housing with higher density on smaller footprints.

>> Because the fire resulted in water contamination, fresh water might need to be obtained from alternative sources in the short to medium term.

“The health effects of the disaster are profound,” UHERO said. “They go beyond the tragic loss of lives and the immediate injuries that many people suffered. Air and water pollution from chemicals released by the fires pose health risks, especially for people with pre- existing respiratory conditions and weakened immune systems. One of the biggest challenges, both immediately and in coming years will be the mental health of survivors.”