Hawaii’s full Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to advance a bill that would let terminally ill patients obtain prescriptions for lethal doses of drugs after an emotional debate on the floor that included one senator’s personal story about his battle with pancreatic cancer and why he opposed giving patients the option to end their own lives.
In a 22-3 vote, the Senate voted to approve Senate Bill 1129, which now heads to the House of Representatives for debate. If the bill, described by advocates as “death with dignity,” is passed by both chambers before the legislative session ends in early May, it has a good chance of gaining the signature of Gov. David Ige, whose office indicated earlier this year that he had supported the concept in the past.
The bill is one of hundreds that passed between the House and Senate chambers in recent days. Lawmakers in the House also advanced an “Airbnb bill,” which has incited heated debate this session and last around the issue of illegal vacation rentals.
Lawmakers have been positioning bills since late last week for what is known as “first crossover,” a step in the legislative process in which all House bills must pass to the Senate and visa versa in order for the measures to receive further consideration this year.
House lawmakers Friday and Tuesday voted to forward 296 bills to the Senate, while senators sent 384 measures to the House, according to spokesmen. The Legislature is now nearly halfway through this year’s 60-day legislative session.
‘Death with dignity’
Rising in support of SB 1129, Sen. Rosalyn Baker (D, West Maui-South Maui) told her colleagues that it was ultimately about individual choice.
“It really puts control in the hands of that patient,” said Baker, chairwoman of the Senate Commerce, Consumer Protection and Health Committee. “If they want to be surrounded by loved ones celebrating those last breaths, that is their choice. If they don’t want to be in a hospice facility, medicated and without control, that is their choice, too.”
Six states currently permit the terminally ill to obtain prescriptions to end their own lives. Hawaii’s measure would allow patients who are believed to have six months or less to live to die in the place and time of their choosing. The measure’s supporters say it’s a compassionate option for people who feel their suffering has become unbearable and want to make that decision for themselves based on their own belief system.
Sen. Breene Harimoto spoke out against the measure.
“I cannot in good conscience vote to allow physicians to become complicit in a patient’s suicide,” he said. “It is a misplaced sense of compassion to allow doctors to become agents of death.”
Harimoto, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June 2015, said he had endured months of suffering, at one point hoping he would die.
“I had suffered so much that at one point when I couldn’t take it anymore, I was crying out to God to take me,” said Harimoto. “I just wanted it all to end.”
He said he was given the will to live through reading Scriptures with his wife. Harimoto’s cancer is now in remission.
For those given a diagnosis of six months or less to live, he said, it is “too easy and tempting in a moment of weakness and despair” to end one’s life.
“I’m just glad I didn’t have those pills when I was suffering so much,” said Harimoto.
In addition to Harimoto, Sens. Mike Gabbard and Gil Riviere voted against the bill, while Sens. Josh Green and Donna Mercado Kim voted yes but with reservations. Green is a Big Island physician.
Vacation rentals
Lawmakers in the House were divided over House Bill 1471, which would authorize the online vacation rental company Airbnb to collect state taxes from both legal and illegal vacation rentals when accepting bookings in Hawaii.
Some lawmakers are concerned that illegal vacation rentals are limiting the supply of available housing for local residents and causing other problems such as increased traffic and noise.
The critics worry that allowing companies such as Airbnb to collect and pay taxes on behalf of the illegal units would effectively conceal the locations and owners of those units, making it harder for county officials to crack down on illegal operators.
Rep. Bert Kobayashi (D, Diamond Head-Kaimuki-Kapahulu) expressed concern that “this proposal would shield the evidence behind the cloak of the Airbnb platform.”
Airbnb representatives emphasize that the company is volunteering to collect taxes from vacation rentals and forward that money to the state, much of which the state is not receiving now. The company reports it had more than 8,300 listings in Hawaii last year, but Airbnb representatives say they do not know how many of those vacation rentals are illegal.
Resistance to the bill prompted an all-out lobbying effort by Airbnb, and the company sent out emails to Hawaii vacation rental operators last week to mobilize local political support for the measure. Lawmakers reported they received dozens of emails from vacation rental operators.
Republican Rep. Cynthia Thielen said the emails were “very misleading” because the authors claimed to be operating legal vacation rentals. However, when Thielen asked whether they have city permits, a number of them admitted they were operating illegally, and Thielen predicted they will continue to do so.
“Maybe we’ll get the tax, but we’ll destroy our local residential neighborhoods,” she said.
House Majority Floor Leader Cindy Evans urged her colleagues to vote for the bill.
“I just want to remind members that it’s really about collecting taxes on people that offer these vacation rentals, and we have so many hotels and timeshares, and so many people that play by the rules and pay their taxes … so we’re trying to find a solution,” she said.
Ige vetoed a similar bill last year, but the governor’s staff this year asked lawmakers to keep the Airbnb bill alive while the administration developed acceptable language.
