A Legislative Analyst Office Created Decades Ago That Still Doesn’t Exist

by Tom Yamachika, President, Tax Foundation Hawaii

This week’s commentary follows up on a great op-ed piece in Civil Beat by Jonathan Helton of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and Nicole Woo of the Hawaii Children’s Action Network. Did you know that we have a law on our books establishing a Joint Legislative Budget Committee, consisting of members from both the House and Senate somewhat like the Joint Committee on Taxation in the U.S. Congress?  And that the same law established an Office of the Legislative Analyst that is supposed to come up with revenue estimates for significant tax and spending bills?

If you’ve never heard of this joint committee or this office, take a look at Chapter 21F of the Hawaii Revised Statutes. That’s the law setting up both of those institutions. Why doesn’t it sound familiar?  The office was never funded, so it never did anything.  And, because that office was never funded, the joint committee never got off the ground either. And guess what?  The law was passed and signed into law in 1990. That’s 34 years ago.  The law is older than many of the legislative aides at the Legislature (as well as a few legislators).  That is a long time for a law that does nothing to be taking up space in our statute books!

Currently, when it comes to estimating the revenue impact of tax bills, the Department of Taxation has a Tax Research and Planning Office with a team focusing on doing just that.  The Department has revenue estimates prepared for most tax bills moving through the session.  (Unless the bills contain blanks in key places, in which case revenue estimation becomes impossible, as our Hawaii State Tax Watch Doggie has earlier complained about.)  But, for some reason, the Department has been notoriously tight-lipped about what those estimates contain. It’s currently rare for a revenue estimate, even as a bare dollar amount, to appear in the Department’s written testimony on any tax bill (including their own).  And, if what you want to see is not only the revenue estimate but the Department’s reasoning on how it got to those numbers, you’d have a better chance of seeing King Kamehameha the Great in our legislative halls than seeing such a document in any kind of public testimony.

I suppose that the Department is worried that if the public sees some of the revenue estimates they have been producing, said public will criticize the Department and make it look bad.  But laws have to be made on solid reasoning and data, not “Trust Me” statements. That’s why the idea of an Office of Legislative Analyst was appealing. It would prepare publicly available fiscal impact notes on bills, perhaps after seeing estimates prepared by other agencies. If there is public criticism?  Then the Legislature, when considering the bill for which the estimate was prepared, can consider the merits or demerits of the comments offered just like it is supposed to consider other public comments on the legislation before it. This is about making good laws, people, and it’s not about hurting some poor economist’s feelings.

In any event, we at the Tax Foundation of Hawaii agree with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and Hawaii Children’s Action Network that reviving this idea has merit and should be considered by our lawmakers.  If the other states all have something like legislative fiscal notes and our state is the only one that doesn’t, it makes lots of people wonder what we in Hawaii are trying to hide.  Come on, lawmakers.  You passed this 34 years ago.  How difficult can it be to make some modernizing tweaks (including funding) and pass it again?