Tag: bills

Stopping unhealthy payments, passing good ones: A successful legislative technique


Check this out : Aloha to Hawaii’s ‘Lone Ranger’

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By Keli‘i Akina

Legendary soccer coach Bear Bryant is credited with saying: “Offense wins video games … protection wins championships.”

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If that’s the case, then the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is the Metal Curtain, the ’85 Bears and the 2000 Ravens of legislative advocacy. What you see won’t all the time be flashy, however it’s formidable.

Yearly, there are literally thousands of payments launched on the Hawaii State Legislature. Of these, lots of get heard and transfer by means of the committee course of, requiring monitoring and testimony.

Keli’i Akina

Within the 2023 session, the Grassroot Institute submitted 142 written testimonies on roughly 82 payments. We tracked lots of extra. Since unhealthy payments are inclined to outnumber good ones, which means we performed lots of protection.

A few of these payments had been riddled with sensible and constitutional points. Others proposed extra laws on companies or tax hikes and different measures certain to extend the price of residing in Hawaii.

However like an incredible defensive crew, my Grassroot Institute colleagues had been there to dam many of those proposals earlier than they reached the top zone.

Contemplate the truth that not a single main tax hike handed this yr — not the wealth asset tax, the capital beneficial properties hike nor the carbon tax. That’s what good protection seems to be like.

Because the session progressed, the Grassroot crew grew to become the main critic of utilizing state funds to advertise tourism — a view that’s beginning to resonate on the Capitol. Finally, the Legislature refused to allocate any cash in any respect to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, which now’s searching for a discretionary handout from the governor.

We additionally had been the one group to level out the various issues with the governor’s proposed “customer influence charge,” and it, too, failed to achieve the top zone.

One other invoice we helped block would have allowed a “deliberative course of” exception to the state’s open data legislation. If enacted, it could have created a serious loophole within the state’s transparency necessities. That invoice went down.

One invoice that we failed to dam has the potential to just about kill the cryptocurrency enterprise in Hawaii. However the sport isn’t over but, so now we’re encouraging individuals to ask Gov. Josh Inexperienced to veto that measure.

By way of offense, I wish to have seen extra good payments handed, however our crew is getting higher on that rely too. We supported a variety of excellent payments, a few of which made it fairly far, if to not the governor’s desk.

We even crafted 15 mannequin payments of our personal that had been launched by completely different legislators. One among them is ready for the governor’s signature: SB674, which might authorize Hawaii to hitch 37 different states within the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact and make it simpler for docs from these states to apply right here and assist alleviate our acute physician scarcity.

However it’s the nature of legislative advocacy that we’ll all the time should play extra protection than offense, particularly contemplating what number of payments are launched and the way typically these payments would enhance taxes or add extra laws.

Victories just like the passage of SB674 are thrilling, and I can’t wait to see extra of them. However I’m completely satisfied that we now have a powerful defensive crew too. Simply think about how a lot larger the worth of paradise can be with out it.

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Keli‘i Akina is president and CEO of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.

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Two payments to signal, two to veto and one to pare down


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By Keli‘i Akina

Hawaii’s Legislature handed 274 payments this 12 months — out of greater than 3,000 launched. However thus far, Gov. Josh Inexperienced has signed solely a handful of them. 

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That leaves a variety of payments for him to learn and resolve their fates. So within the spirit of “E hana kākou” (“Let’s work collectively”), I want to supply some suggestions that ought to make the governor’s job just a little simpler.

Keli’i Akina

>> First, he ought to signal SB674, which might enable Hawaii to affix the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact and make it simpler for out-of-state medical doctors to apply in Hawaii.

Attracting extra medical professionals to Hawaii isn’t just a good suggestion, it’s an pressing want. Our state is brief nearly 800 physicians, and that has precipitated monumental struggling and inconvenience for Hawaii residents in want of healthcare, particularly in rural areas and on the neighbor islands. 

The physician compact already consists of 37 different states, and with only a stroke of the governor’s pen, medical doctors from each one in all them would have the ability to relocate to the islands with out having to leap by way of any of Hawaii’s tough, costly and time-consuming regulatory hoops.

I understand becoming a member of the interstate licensure compact for medical doctors wouldn’t remedy all of Hawaii’s healthcare issues, however it will be an necessary first step.

>> Subsequent, Gov. Inexperienced ought to signal SB1437, a tax reform invoice that may enable “pass-through entities” similar to partnerships and S companies to deduct their state earnings tax liabilities from their federal earnings tax liabilities. Provided that Hawaii is taken into account one of many worst states for companies and entrepreneurs, this is able to be a easy technique to decrease the tax burden on native companies — and for free of charge to the state!

The apply has been OK’d by the IRS and is already allowed in 29 different states, saving companies in these states billions of {dollars}.

>> On the “thumbs down” facet of the ledger, Gov. Inexperienced ought to veto SB945, a heavy-handed licensing scheme that might probably run cryptocurrency corporations in Hawaii out of enterprise. 

Among the many invoice’s many main flaws, it will give the Division of Monetary Establishments director immense energy to rewrite the legislation at will. Not solely would this create a possible battle with any federal rules, however it will put an excessive amount of energy within the arms of an unelected bureaucrat and create a paralyzing stage of regulatory uncertainty for cryptocurrency corporations hoping to do enterprise in our state. 

>> I additionally want to see the governor veto HB525, one other large invoice that might derail the expansion of cryptocurrency in Hawaii.

A lot of the invoice considerations amendments to the state’s Uniform Industrial Code, however one part would exclude all digital currencies from the definition of “cash,” until they have been created by a authorities. This, after all, would go away all the opposite cryptocurrencies out within the chilly within the case of business cost disputes.

Except for these 4 payments, there’s the matter of the Legislature’s proposed finances, which stands to extend common fund spending by 23% over final 12 months and exceed the state’s authorized spending restrict by greater than 10%, or greater than $1 billion.

My hope is that Gov. Inexperienced will use his line-item veto energy to trim again this large spending overreach, together with the $200 million “slush fund” that the Legislature appropriated to him, which fits towards our beliefs of transparency and authorities accountability.

Gov. Inexperienced has till June 26 to submit his intent-to-veto listing to the Legislature, however I hope this brief listing provides him a head begin on find out how to cope with all of the payments that stay on his desk. 
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Keli‘i Akina is president and CEO of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.

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