800 bills still alive at state Legislature’s halfway point

State legislators appear willing to spare the Hawaii Tourism Authority from what had been all-but-certain death last year, but at the midway point of this legislative session have failed to restore HTA’s funding that they eliminated last session.

At the same time, the latest version of House Bill 2406 that crossed over from the House to the Senate last week would add a $25 tax on transient accommodations to help offset tourists’ impacts on Hawaii’s environment and address climate change.

Gov. Josh Green has said that a so-called visitor impact fee could help curtail visitors as their numbers rebound from a pre-pandemic record of more than 10 million annually.

Roughly 2,400 bills were introduced this year but only a third — or nearly 800 — have survived so far by crossing over from the House to the Senate, or from the Senate to the House.

About 700 bills introduced last year also technically could still become law after crossing between chambers last year, but only a relatively few historically become reality following two years of debate.

On average, only about 250 bills have become law each year over the past decade or so.

The ones that have survived so far this session range from the relatively benign to unknown millions of dollars that will be needed from the state in the aftermath of the Aug. 8 Maui wildfires.

Two bills passed by the Senate to help Maui await major work in the House.

Senate Bill 582 would make an emergency appropriation to cover wildfire expenses for the current fiscal year, which runs to June 30.

The bill was sent to the House with no dollar amount because solid estimates of the expected costs weren’t available sooner.

Green sent legislative leaders a memo requesting $362 million for SB 582, but the Senate received the message on the same day, Tuesday, that it passed the bill with a blank appropriation.

The other Maui wildfire expense bill, SB 3068, appropriates funding for the next fiscal year, and includes a $452 million request using general fund revenue as well as $160 million in bond funding.

SB 3068 would pay for things including the development of temporary housing and infrastructure repairs in Lahaina. Still, the request is viewed as preliminary, with 20 of the Senate’s 25 members voting to pass the bill with reservations.

“The Senate still has quite a bit of work to do to vet all of the different appropriations in the bill,” Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz (D, Mililani-­Wahiawa-Whitmore Village), chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, told colleagues Tuesday on the floor of the Senate chamber moments before voting.

“I’m hoping over the next couple of weeks we can work with the administration to get a better idea of what we can support to make sure that Lahaina residents can move on, and at the same time ensure that we have some fiscal restraint so that we can support all the residents of our state,” Dela Cruz told senators.

Other bills that remain alive would:

— Legalize adult recreational marijuana use through the latest version of SB 3335.

— Provide eligible teachers with up to $500 a month for up to two years through the latest version of HB 2514.

— Restore the position of state fire marshal to oversee statewide fire protection efforts in response to the Maui wildfires under the latest versions of HB 1843 and SB 2085.

— Lower the blood alcohol content for drunk driving from .08 to .05 under SB 2384 that Green — America’s only sitting governor who is also a medical doctor — has personally pushed.

— Designate Sept. 21 of each year as World Peace Day through the latest version of HB 1780.

— Designate Nov. 22 of each year as “Kimchi Day” through HB 1950.

— Address long-standing complaints about feral chickens across the state by requiring the state Departments of Land and Natural Resources and Agriculture to collaborate with counties on managing feral chickens through the latest version of HB 2046.

— Make it illegal to distribute deceptive and fraudulent “deep fakes” of a candidate or party before an election through the latest version of HB 1766.

— Increase the amount of partial public campaign financing for all elected offices through the latest version of HB 1845.

— Create special number license plates to honor veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars through the latest version of SB 2731.

— Authorize HTA to sell or lease naming rights for the Hawai‘i Convention Center through the latest version of SB 3006.

Two separate bills — one each from the House and Senate — would have eliminated the HTA, but appear dead.

The latest version of SB 1522 would eliminate the HTA and create a new Office of Destination Management within the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

The latest version of HB 1375 would eliminate both the HTA and its board of directors and would transfer “the functions, duties, appropriations, and positions of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority to the Office of Tourism and Destination Management.”

The mere existence of the HTA to oversee tourism — Hawaii’s largest economic driver — has been in peril before, especially since 2021 when the Legislature took away the dedicated transient accommodations tax funding that HTA relied on since its creation more than a quarter century before.

HTA’s normal $79 million annual TAT distribution was replaced with $60 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.

Then last year, Green helped steer $60 million to HTA from the general fund.

In a statement at the time, Green said, “Legislative leaders provided flexibility to our administration to fund HTA. But, it is important that we figure out how we can shift this agency from its focus of marketing tourism to more strategically looking at destination management that would attract and educate responsible visitors.”