Tag: Legislative

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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Legislative Insanity


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Within the sports activities world, we’ve got “March Insanity.”  Final week on this area, we wrote about “Credit score Insanity.”  Now, lest we miss the forest for the bushes, let’s talk about insanity on the Legislature basically.

A month in the past, Civil Beat interviewed Sen. Stanley Chang, who had launched Senate Invoice 149 with a constitutional modification to have the Legislature meet year-round, just like the Honolulu Metropolis Council.  On the Council, the schedule “permitted time for deliberation, session with stakeholders and accessibility for the general public,” he mentioned.  On the Legislature, alternatively?  “It’s simply 4 months of chaos – it was very hanging.”  (Sen. Chang’s invoice was heard and handed by Senate Judiciary, however hit a wall when it obtained to Methods and Means.  It’s useless for this session.)

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Let me provide you with a bit little bit of how that appears from my perspective.

The Tax Basis of Hawaii follows payments that take care of taxation or public finance.  This 12 months, there have been greater than 3,100 payments launched on the Legislature.  The Legislature usually considers round 2,500 to 2,700 payments a session, so this 12 months’s crop of payments was big.  Usually, we choose about 10% of these payments to comply with.  This 12 months was no completely different.  We have been following about 300 payments.

In the beginning of the session, payments are usually thought of by committees that think about a number of particular areas, akin to Agriculture, Training, Power and the Surroundings, or Housing.  We name these “subject material committees.”  The Home and Senate have 33 committees between them.  Of these, there are 27 subject material committees.  Six have a large purview (Judiciary, Cash, and Commerce committees in each chambers) and often are the final committees to which payments get referred.

Throughout the first couple of weeks within the Legislature’s 60-day calendar, a lot of the motion happens in subject material committees, and with dozens of committees making an attempt to listen to payments and transfer them on the similar time, there isn’t a lot respiration room.  Throughout this era, for instance, we have been getting 30 listening to notices on payments we have been following … on Friday afternoon.  Testimony on payments must be submitted 24 hours earlier than the listening to, and quite a few the payments have been to be heard on Monday.  A lot for our nights and weekends.  When the work week rolled round, it wasn’t unusual for a number of hearings to be held on the similar time.  We have been triple-set or quadruple-set for a couple of of them.  Thank goodness that the Legislature permits testimony through Zoom, so we might zip forwards and backwards between hearings as wanted.

Within the second two-week interval, the payments we comply with are thought of by Home Finance and Senate Methods and Means.  The Senate gained’t give a invoice a listening to if it was already heard in an issue committee; it permits people to submit written testimony solely, after which meets to make choices on the payments.  Within the Home, the chair doesn’t crack the whip fairly as onerous, and usually provides testifiers the time they want and accommodates many questions by Finance members.  In consequence, lots of the Finance hearings begin far later than they’re scheduled.  I keep in mind logging in for a 2:00 PM listening to and never recognizing any of the payments being heard – the committee was nonetheless on their 11:00 AM agenda.  In consequence, some hearings continued nicely after sundown (I pressed the logout button, however legislators, their aides, and quite a few different testifiers attending the hearings didn’t have that luxurious).

The following 4 weeks of the session are considerably just like the primary 4 weeks, however there are fewer payments as a result of plenty of payments have fallen by the wayside.

The final couple of weeks within the session are the scariest.  That’s when the Convention Committees meet, ostensibly to resolve variations between the Home and Senate however solely the oldsters on the within know for certain what actually goes on.  The general public isn’t invited to a lot of the deliberations, and solely is known as in when either side are able to announce a consequence and maintain a vote. 

In any occasion, Sen. Chang actually has some extent, and we maybe could possibly be fascinated by methods to make the legislative course of much less chaotic and extra accessible.

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Potential for progress this legislative season


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By Keli‘i Akina

Photograph by Charley Myers

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The 2023 Hawaii Legislature is now in session, and for organizations just like the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, this is without doubt one of the busiest occasions of the yr. 

In previous periods, my Institute colleagues and I’ve usually spent extra time making an attempt to cease dangerous concepts than see good ones make it to the end line. This yr, nevertheless, we’ve got excessive hopes for a couple of concepts that might make an actual distinction for our state. 

Specifically, we’ve got been advancing particular reforms to assist decrease the price of dwelling, enhance the availability of housing and enhance healthcare entry for the folks of Hawaii — and it seems possible that some, if not all, of those proposed reforms will likely be warmly acquired.

Concerning extra housing, the hot button is to cut back Hawaii’s land-use and zoning laws, which research present are considerably associated to housing shortages and better costs.

Keli‘i Akina

When it comes to land use, the Legislature might reform the state Land Use Fee’s permit-approval course of, which provides to the time and prices of homebuilding. One repair can be to lighten the LUC’s allowing docket by growing the variety of acres that counties are allowed to rule on. At present the restrict is 15 acres. Something bigger in the intervening time is as much as the LUC.

Zoning codes, in the meantime, are a county operate, however the state can assist body how they’re utilized. For instance, the Legislature might require that the counties permit extra multi-unit houses resembling duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes. It additionally might place restrictions on so-called inclusionary zoning laws, which traditionally have held again smaller, mid-range housing developments. 

Lastly, the Legislature might assist nonprofits resembling faculties and hospitals with their recruitment and housing points by making it simpler for establishments to construct housing on their very own lands.

Within the realm of healthcare, one of many largest issues in the intervening time is Hawaii’s perpetual scarcity of docs, nurses and different healthcare employees. 

Lawmakers might tackle this by permitting out-of-state license holders to apply in Hawaii — just like what we skilled underneath Gov. David Ige’s emergency orders through the coronavirus disaster. This might be achieved unilaterally or by becoming a member of the interstate compacts for physicians, nurses and different medical professionals, by which every member state acknowledges the licenses of all the opposite member states. 

Licensing, nevertheless, is simply a part of the issue. We additionally have to make Hawaii a friendlier state for personal apply docs. Meaning taking a tough have a look at the state’s common excise tax, which makes it troublesome for personal practices to outlive, particularly in the event that they take Medicare, Medicaid or TRICARE sufferers. 

For the previous few months, the Grassroot Institute has been working a marketing campaign to exempt medical providers from the final excise tax, and now could be the right time for the Legislature to behave. Not solely would such an exemption assist appeal to extra docs to our state, it additionally would decrease healthcare prices for Hawaii residents.

Talking of taxes and drugs, we’ve got a prescription for the Legislature in the case of taxes and the funds, and it’s taken immediately from the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no hurt. 

In different phrases, this isn’t the time to contemplate tax hikes of any sort. The state is swimming in extra revenues and has no want for extra. With so many Hawaii residents struggling to make ends meet, lawmakers as an alternative needs to be methods to chop taxes.

As well as, we’d prefer to see a balanced funds that features no revenue-draining boondoggles, no new borrowing and no profligate spending. Perhaps even give slightly little bit of the state’s anticipated $3 billion surplus again to the folks, maybe after bolstering the state’s wet day fund and addressing its unfunded liabilities.

My sense is that these are all sensible and politically palatable concepts that will convey down housing prices, strengthen healthcare entry and, basically, decrease our ridiculously excessive value of dwelling. Not would we’ve got to fret about our household, buddies and neighbors leaving the islands for better alternatives elsewhere.

If the Legislature embraces these concepts, we will likely be properly on our solution to making Hawaii a spot by which we are able to all dwell and thrive.
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Keli‘i Akina is president and CEO of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.

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