State lawmakers might once again tinker with their pay cut.

A year after passing a flawed extension of a 5 percent pay cut for the governor, lieutenant governor, department directors, judges and lawmakers through December 2013, lawmakers might end the pay cut six months sooner, at the close of June 2013.

The adjustment would align the pay cut to salary reductions in place for many public employees. It would also prevent a potential conflict between the pay cut and recommendations expected later this year from the salary commission for executives and judges starting in July 2013. Under the state Constitution, the salary commission makes pay recommendations that become law unless lawmakers vote to reject them.

A bill to end the pay cut at the end of June 2013 — House Bill 1744 — passed the House and cleared the Senate’s Ways and Means and Judiciary and Labor committees Tuesday.

Under the bill, once the pay cut ends in June 2013, executive, judicial and legislative salaries would revert to the commission’s last available recommendations, so they will be higher than when the pay cut was first imposed and salaries were frozen in 2009.

Last year, after conference committee negotiations between the House and Senate stalled, the Legislature approved what many considered a technically flawed bill to extend the pay cut through December 2013. If lawmakers had not taken any action, the pay cut, originally passed when the state was facing a budget deficit in 2009, would have expired last July.

The pay cut has been a politically sensitive issue for lawmakers, who were widely criticized for accepting a 36 percent raise in 2009 that the commission had previously recommended. But most of the recent concern has been whether judges would be treated fairly under the law as written. The state Judiciary supports the new bill.

"There was a problem with the measure passed last year. The only proposal to correct the change was the one initiated by the Judiciary, and that’s what the committees heard," said state Sen. David Ige (D, Aiea-Pearl City), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. "So we responded to the request from the Judiciary."

While much of the previous criticism surrounding the pay issue has been aimed at the Legislature, Ige noted that sitting lawmakers — unlike executives and judges — face voters in November, before any pay adjustment would take effect.

"The legislative branch is different than anybody else in that we all stand for election in November," he said. "We definitely — those sitting in office today — don’t benefit from this measure at all."