Hill, Fidell praise peeling back of multi-layered housing barriers

from Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, May 8, 2025

There were many praiseworthy actions taken by the Legislature this year, but foremost among them was the peeling away of more regulations that have been hindering homebuilding in Hawaii.

That was something both guest Malia Hill and host Jay Fidell agreed on during the May 7, 2025, episode of “Hawaii Together” on ThinkTech Hawaii.

Hill, policy director of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, noted that Hawaii’s housing crisis is a “multi-layered thing. … You know, there’s not one solution. It’s a bunch of issues. So any one of these [housing reform] bills [that passed], you know, you might wonder why does it matter so much? … Well, it’s just one more layer, and we’re just trying to get rid of these blocks, these barriers that make it difficult to grow housing.”

“That’s a great approach,” responded Fidell, founder and president of the nonprofit online news and community affairs website. “You know, it’s one step at a time, a little here, a little there, and after a while, you have a major change in policy. And everything you’ve described so far sounds very appealing and helpful.”

Hill and Fidell also discussed measures related to taxes, the rebuilding of Lahaina, civil asset forfeiture, education and emergency powers.

Hill said bills to reform the governor’s emergency powers “got all the way to conference committee, which was exciting, [but] then they died, so I was pretty disappointed about that.”

“It’s strange,” she continued, “because I praise the governor’s emergency orders all the time. You know, they threw away red tape and that kind of thing. But I still think that our emergency powers law needs to be reformed … because sometimes you don’t get a governor who you like what they’re doing. That’s why you need these checks and balances.”

Fidell said he hoped Grassroot would follow up with this issue next year. 

“I mean, this is an important part of the dialogue over democracy,” he said, “not only here in Hawaii, but nationally. Emergency powers can be abused or mistreated, misconstrued, if you will.” 

TRANSCRIPT:

5-7-25 Malia Hill with host “Hawaii Together” host Jay Fidell on ThinkTech Hawaii

Jay Fidell: Welcome to “Hawaii Together” on ThinkTech Hawaii. I’m your host, Jay Fidelll. 

Today, we’ll give you a legislative update, a report on the 2025 legislative session. Our guest for the show is Malia Blom Hill, policy director of Grassroot Institute. Welcome to the show, Malia.

Malia Blom Hill: Thanks for having me.

Fidell: You know, even if we could not follow the action day by day during the 2025 session, it’s important that we review what happened now after the session has closed and before the governor gets to veto or sign bills. 

So the first thing is, you have sent around a newsletter, which I was very impressed with. The Grassroot Institute hailed the 2025 session for bills intended to increase the state’s housing stock, speed up the recovery of Lahaina and increase government accountability, among other things.

The bills were among more than 200 bills the Legislature approved a few days ago in advance of the final session day. 

So let’s talk about the housing measures first. Let’s talk about some of the bills that you liked. One of them was HB422. What was that about?

Hill: Yeah, so HB422, you know, if I’m gonna give a grade, this is one of the ones that gets a good grade, especially housing, but especially 422. 

So 422 had to do with school impact fees. We did a whole brief about this, how school impact fees basically can add thousands of dollars to the cost of the home. Effectively, the Department of Education is allowed to levy a fee if you’re building and if you live in a specific district, and it’s sort of dependent on where you’re building.

We have one story of a family from Kahului, and they just wanted to build an ADU on their property in 2022, and the school impact fee for them was $5,373. That’s five times the cost of the building permit, like about 6% or so of the whole cost of the build. 

The crazy thing is that they have these fees, you know, and that’s just one ADU, so imagine you’re building, you know, 20 units that’s just exponentially more. So that cost gets passed on to the buyer. So it’s just adding thousands of dollars to the cost of a home every time, and yet the Department of Education hasn’t actually spent any of the money of the fees they’ve collected.

So we have this program that’s supposed to be a very important — it has the word “school” in it — and yet it hasn’t done anything except make housing more expensive. So 422 was introduced and it evolved over the course of the session. But what we got at the end was a bill that, you know, effectively eliminates it for smaller projects, but, you know, overall substantially reduces the school impact fee, and it creates exemptions for certain kinds of housing projects. 

So, you know, we can go ahead and call it, you know, not a total repeal of school impact fees, but mostly a repeal of school impact fees, and that’s pretty important.

Fidell: Well, that’s great. An important change, a useful change. Likelihood of signature or becoming law?

Hill: I think it’s probably very likely. It’s something that the governor specifically called out in his executive orders on affordable housing. So it’s not a surprise to anyone that this has been an issue. It’s been identified as a problem when it comes to building housing. So I’m optimistic that the governor will sign it.

Fidell: Oh, good. Let’s go to SB66, and that’s about building permits, and I think that’s very valuable. In fact, we had a show with Joe Kent of Grassroot Institute a couple of months ago about a particular problem over a fellow on the Big Island, who had trouble getting a building permit. So this sounds like it’s right in the center of the channel. What is SB66 about?

Hill: Yeah, this is one of my favorites of the whole session.

Effectively, you know, the legislature has been dealing with this whole permit delay issue for a while, and it’s a kind of complicated problem from the legislative point of view because those delays are happening at the county level. 

So it’s up to them to make a law that the counties then have to implement. And obviously, the counties have their own opinion about it, and they have to figure out, you know, how to work with a law that applies to Honolulu and Kauai, and it’s complicated. 

So what they came up with was sort of a combination of a third-party review with a shot-clock sort of element. 

What it does is it creates this special expedited process that makes it possible for people looking for single-family, multi-family housing project permits to get that permit in about 60 days. 

What happens is you apply for your permit. In a perfect world, everything goes swimmingly, your permit gets approved before this even becomes relevant. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and a lot of people are probably just going, we’ll get to the point. 

So, the point, if 60 days hits and it hasn’t been approved, that makes you eligible for an expedited permit. 

Now, there’s some conditions. Your application has to be complete, that involves all the documentation that you might need to have for that permit, you know, historic review, affidavits, and that kind of thing, all the plans, the whole packet has to be complete. 

But if you do that and you get a certification from a licensed professional and you agree to waive liability claims against the county and state, then your permit’s deemed approved and you can start building. 

So the idea is, you know, I think the hope is that having this in place will just bring down review times across the board, and they won’t even have to come back to revisit the whole time-frame question or when the expedited permit needs to come into play.

Fidell: That’s great. I must say that that’s going to help Lahaina, isn’t it? It’s going to help Maui, it’s going to help situations such as we know people are having in Maui. What’s the likelihood of becoming law?

Hill: Well, I’m going to be optimistic about this one, too. We haven’t heard anything about any major opposition to it. I know that, you know, usually any kind of pushback you get is from the counties, you know, the county planning departments saying, “How are we going to do this?” But I think even at the county level, maybe not all the counties, but certain counties [chuckles] are interested and willing to look at ways to expedite. So I’m feeling optimistic about this one as well.

Fidell: Well, it sounds like a very important bill. I mean, we’ve been saddled with permit delays for so long, and any progress we can make is well worth the effort. 

By the way, are these your bills, or are these bills from other sources?

Hill: Well, you know, they’re fundamentally the bills of the introducers and the legislators who worked very hard on them, which is not to say that we have not also been very active in making suggestions. 

You know, permitting is something that Grassroot has been really involved in, and the two elements in this bill, a sort of shot clock and third-party review, are things that we recommended in our brief about ways to speed up permitting. 

So you know, we are very busy during the legislative session doing things like saying, you know, you should try this. And it’s always nice when they actually do.

Fidell: Well, you’ve got to be in the conversation, right? And that really helps.

Hill: Exactly.

Fidell: OK. We’ve got more bills about approval delays. That is SB15 and HB830. What are those about, and how do they avoid approval delays?

Hill: Yeah, so this is, I mean, the delays in building in Hawaii are just, I mean, some of the worst in the country. There’s a UH [University of Hawaii] study that goes into that. And one of the reasons is that there’s just so many things, you know, you’ve got your permit, you’ve got land use, and you have historic review.

And the problem is that the definition of historic property going into this session was based on this 50-year threshold. And more and more properties were about to fall into that category as [they] got older. And I don’t know about you, but I feel like being 50 does not make you a historic monument, [chuckles] not by itself. There needs to be something else. 

I think Joe, the EVP [execurive vice president] at Grassroot, he’s always using “All in the Family”[ as the comparison. We looked at it and, you know, on Oahu alone, there are something like 8,500 parcels in the property taxes for industrial, commercial, hotel and resort. And more than half of them were built in 1975 or before. 

And so that means these are things that are going to fall into historic review. And the problem with that is that when you fall into the category, now you have this whole other level of approval and review that needs to go through before you can build.

So, you know, we looked at the data, and the vast majority of these projects, when the agency reviews them, it’s fine; 90% of the projects they review, you know, under these historic review requirements, there was no impact. It was fine. But you still have to go through it. And it just adds months to the whole process. Time is money. It adds costs. So you’re adding time and cost to construction. 

So the idea was, let’s just reduce that. Let’s reduce the time it takes to review it. And let’s take some of these out of the review category so that there isn’t so much, the line isn’t as long.

So SB15 redefines what historic property is, and it has the 50-year threshold, but also meeting criteria for inclusion in the register of historic places. And it has some exclusions and such so that effectively we’re just kind of redefining historic review. So it’s not as broad, just a sort of common-sense redefinition.

And then HB830 kind of goes along with it. And what it does is just streamline the historic review process by allowing the state to use third-party review to process these historic review applications. 

So the upshot of it is that we’re just reducing the amount of regulation, reducing the review time and the barriers that basically add to housing costs and slow housing growth.

Fidell: Yeah. Bless you for that, Malia, because, you know, there is a direct connection between approval delays and the availability of housing, and everybody knows that Hawaii has a housing shortage, if not a housing crisis. 

So, can you explain from a policy point of view how reduced delays result in greater housing available to our community?

Hill: I mean, you know, it’s almost like intuitive because time is money and by extending how many approvals you have to go through, how many delays there are, you basically add to the uncertainty. 

You know, are you going to get this approval, how long is it going to take? You know, what is it going to cost? 

Sometimes, in very real terms, in the time that you’re waiting to get the approvals in Hawaii for a build, the cost of materials will increase substantially. And so now you have the time weight, you have higher material costs, higher construction costs. Now, you know, now you can’t build what you’d hope to build, or you can’t build on the timeline you built. 

So, you know, it’s very much, you know, exactly what you would think: When it takes longer, when it costs more, effectively, the people who want that housing they’re waiting longer, they’re getting less. So the idea is you cut down the number of approvals, things get built more quickly. You don’t discourage people from getting into the industry and actually building houses. 

If you want people to want to build houses, you don’t want to look at them to look at the situation and go, “It takes a long time and it’s really expensive and there’s a lot of uncertainties, and we don’t even know if we’ll get through all the regulations.” 

That’s not how you want someone to look at the problem of building a house in Hawaii. You want them to go, “OK, we know we’ll be able to finish on time, on schedule, on budget, you know, let’s go forward.” And that’s basically what we’re trying to make it possible to do.

Fidell: Yeah, some people won’t be able to handle the delay, and maybe they’ll wind up homeless for the lack of a house, for the lack of a permit. 

The other thing is, it just strikes me from what you’ve said is that people who can’t get their permits may be interested in leaving the state, which is exactly what we don’t want. We want them to have … 

Hill: Exactly.

Fidell: … an easy experience here so they stay here.

Hill: I mean, I have talked to people who have houses that are just waiting, just waiting. They’ve been waiting months, even years, you know, going, you know, maybe they’re living with family, maybe they’re renting, but that’s expensive. 

And incidentally, that’s also tying up more housing. So it’s a sort of like crisis of layers, you know? By having this problem, you create more problems. Now there’s, you know, even less housing available because the people waiting also need somewhere to live while they’re waiting. 

So it’s a multi-layered thing. We always say there’s not, you know, one solution to the housing crisis. It’s a bunch of issues.

So any one of these bills, you know, you might wonder why does it matter so much if historic review is, you know, like this? Well, it’s just one more layer, and we’re just trying to get rid of these blocks, these barriers that make it difficult to grow housing.

Fidell: That’s a great approach. You know, it’s one step at a time, a little here, a little there, and after a while, you have a major change in policy. And everything you’ve described so far sounds very appealing and helpful. 

On SB15 and HB830, I take it you’ve talked with the governor or suggested the governor should sign these bills. Is that happening?

Hill: We hope so, and you’ll probably hear more from us in the future about it. The people who are very focused on groups and advocates, and that kind of, and just regular people who are focused on housing affordability and availability, this is very important. Talked about it a lot. 

There are always people who are opposed. It doesn’t matter what the bill is. I can probably find you someone who opposes it, and that’s the case with this as well. 

You know, there are people who are concerned. You know, they think historic review is very important and they don’t want it to be streamlined, or they don’t want people, they don’t want properties cut out of it. And they have their reasons, but I think it’s a sort of perfect is the enemy of the good.

Every regulation has, you know, a side to it where you can go, “Well, I can see what you mean by that.” But you have to look at the totality of what has happened, you know? And no matter how good the intentions are, the damage done is much bigger than the good. 

Fidell: Lahaina, the legislature approved SB1296, which would codify ]Gov.[ Josh Green’s emergency waiver of special management area rules for Lahaina. How does that work, and what are the policy considerations?

Hill: Well, you know, this was another important piece of legislation. You know, the people living in the SMA, Special Management Area, they have to get a special permit in order to rebuild. 

Now, that takes even longer. You know, we talked about the many layers. This is another layer. And you know, that’s another weight. And of course, the people in Lahaina, they just want to rebuild what they had. You know, that’s what they tell us over and over again.

And so ]SB[1296 was, we thought, very important because it’s just letting people rebuild and it’s letting them rebuild without so much red tape.

The governor had addressed this in his emergency orders, but, you know, number one, emergency orders do end eventually. And number two, you know, you like the certainty of a law that just covers it all. 

So this basically would allow anyone outside of the shoreline setback area — which I’ll turn to that in a second in this SMA zone — whose property is destroyed in a disaster to rebuild on the same footprint as before. So seems like a very common sense. Your home was destroyed in a natural disaster, why shouldn’t you be able to rebuild it as it was before? And so this just really cements that in law. 

It’s actually broader than just Lahaina. It is natural disasters. They also gave it a sunset, which I hope they’ll reconsider because, you know, I think no matter what the natural disaster is and what island it is, it should just be part of the law moving forward, but for now, it’s got a sunset clause.

They also amended it at the very end of the session so that people in the shoreline setback are left out of it. They are not covered by this bill, and that was one of my disappointments. 

It’s a good bill. We’re very happy that it passed, but I would’ve liked it even better if it had included the people in the shoreline setback.

Fidell: You know, a friend of mine lost his house in the fires, and he hasn’t been able to rebuild yet, and it’s one thing after another. And it’s really tragic how many people are in his circumstances. They wait, they wait, and it discourages them from staying in Hawaii. It discourages them from moving on with their lives. So any bill along these lines, in my view, is a very important useful bill. 

So, query, what are the chances of it becoming law?

Hill: Well, you know, as it is right now, I would imagine, you know, there’s no reason not to sign it. It’s basically just doing what the emergency orders did. So it would be surprising not to. It just provides greater clarity, and, you know, it’s a sort of strong statement. You know, we believe that these people should be able to rebuild. 

I would be surprised because why not sign it? You know? I think everyone wants Lahaina to be rebuilt. So I would be surprised if the governor didn’t sign it, to be honest.

Fidell: You know, it’s not only relevant in the fires in Lahaina, it’s relevant as you said, and it covers, as you said, other disasters later. We have to be prepared. We live in a time of climate change. We have to be prepared for this to happen again. We have to harden our legal infrastructure to allow people to recover. I see that involved in this bill.

Hill: Exactly. It’s, you know, one of the things that we’ve been talking about as an organization is, you know, the lessons from Lahaina. And one of the biggest lessons is that, you know, you may not realize it, but you have all of these bureaucratic barriers that prevent people from rebuilding their home after a disaster. And that shouldn’t be. It should be something that’s relatively easy to do. Someone shouldn’t have to wait years in order to have their home back. 

So I do think that this is the kind of thing that should just be permanent, that we should be more prepared for.

Fidell: Yes. Amen to that. So let’s talk about transparency and accountability of the civil asset forfeiture program. The word forfeiture gives me a bit of a rash, if you will. This is HB126. Can you talk about that?

Hill: Yeah. This one was a wild ride because there had actually been two asset forfeiture bills introduced this year. And this one kind of underwent a transformation, over the course of the session. 

And, for those who don’t know, asset forfeiture is when the government can take your property. If you’re accused of a crime, government is allowed to take the property that they deem is associated with the crime and the fruit of the crime and keep it, sell it, you know, take the asset.

And the problem with that, because you know, if you only think about it in terms of people who are guilty and did something terrible, you probably don’t see the problem with that, but the problem with that is that it is often used, it is abused. It can be used against people who didn’t actually, you know, who are never convicted, who, you know, weren’t even knowledgeable. There are all sorts of horror stories about this all through the country about how this is used.

And Hawaii had a very bad grade on its asset forfeiture program. It was not very transparent. The auditor gave it a bad grade. You know, they didn’t keep good records. 

So HB126 originally was intended to sort out the transparency and accountability issue. And then once it hit the Senate, it actually became a bill to maybe reform asset forfeiture, just overall, so that you wouldn’t have innocent victims.

It got watered down a little bit. I mentioned that, you know, mild disappointments. I was wildly disappointed. I would have liked to see a bill that would not allow asset forfeiture unless there was a conviction, that would require any money from asset forfeiture to go to the general fund instead of the agencies that did the forfeiture. 

However, it is an improvement. They changed it so that you cannot forfeit your property unless there’s a charge. There’s a time limit on how long this government has to file that charge against you, after which the property comes back to you if they don’t do that.

And they also, they divvied up the proceeds, which is not ideal, because you want to not incentivize agencies to take property. You don’t want them to benefit from it; that kind of keeps it more accountable. But it is better. 

It is limiting it. It is improving transparency and accountability. And that I have to, praise, you know. They got something through. This is a bill that goes up every year and usually fails at some point.

Fidell: You know, forfeiture, the reason it gives me a rash, is that it flies in the face of a legal concept that is much in the news these days, that is due process. So the closer you get to a kind of due process transparency, the better off we are. Forfeiture is cruel. Sorry.

Hill: No. I totally agree with you. There are so many stories of people, you know, who basically have their property as money, cars, whatever, taken and aren’t ever really accused of a crime, but it’s just gone. And, you know, Hawaii may not have, you know, some of the super horror stories on the mainland, but the fundamental principle remains the same. And I think that it’s same.

I mean, personally, I would like to see the Supreme Court consider forfeiture more clearly. There have been efforts to take it to the ]U.S.[Supreme Court. But in the meantime, you could at least clean it up and make it very hard to abuse. And, you know, that’s what I think they’re trying to do here to some degree.

Fidell: Let’s talk about schools for a minute, Malia. So two bills relate to that, SB1065, which prohibits state and county agencies from requiring a bachelor’s degree as a condition of employment, and HB1379, which would make it easier for graduates of foreign medical schools — and that’s an interesting concept, term and phenomenon right now in these days — make it easier for them to practice in Hawaii. Remember, we have a doctor shortage here. So anything and everything we can do to alleviate the doctor shortage is very helpful, no?

Hill: Absolutely. 

So I’ll start on the foreign medical graduates. That’s actually an interesting bill because I think it sort of opens the door to even more ways to look at the doctor shortage. 

So, you know, a couple of years ago, we joined the medical compact, the doctor’s compact. And that was, you know, in order to make it easier ]for doctors from other U.S. states[ to practice in Hawaii. And this is just another step down that line, just kind of making it easier for graduates of foreign medical schools to get a license. They didn’t, you know, do away with everything. They’re basically just kind of opening it up because before, you had to follow this very rigid path.

And they basically said, you know, no, we’re going to kind of come up with an alternative pathway. If you graduated from a foreign medical school and you’ve passed, you know, the necessary examinations and done the training, we’re going to make it a little easier than this very convoluted path you had to follow before.

And like you said, you know, we have a doctor shortage and, you know, Hawaii, it’s a beautiful place to be and to practice, but you have to make it not so difficult to do that. And I think this is an important step towards that. 

The other bill you mentioned, SB1065, about skills-based hiring. I actually, this has gone under the radar a little bit. And I think that people don’t appreciate what an important step this is because basically what it says is that the state, its departments, agencies, subdivisions, they cannot require a bachelor’s degree as a condition of eligibility to hire in state or county employment. 

Now, there are exemptions. So, you know, if there are certain kinds of positions that, you know, you definitely need to have a degree in that in order to hold that position, then there are some exceptions.

But it’s basically saying, you know, if you have the skills to do something, you shouldn’t be locked out of that job, you know, from the state or county, because you don’t have a bachelor’s degree. 

And, you know, not only does this mean that you are making it possible for highly skilled people to get these jobs, but you’re also dealing with that vacancy issue that they have where there’s, you know, an enormous number of vacancies in the state and county. 

I mean, they always tell us that that’s one of the problems in, you know, name any kind of thing where people complain about delays, and the state agency will go up. You know, we aren’t able to fill all the roles. We need more people. Well, here you go.

Fidell: Well, it sounds like, you know, up to this point in our discussion, my general impression is you guys are trying to reduce the amount of bureaucracy in the state. And the state does have a formidable amount of bureaucracy. We all know that. And it grows like topsy unless somebody like you comes around and tries to reduce it. So good for you on that. 

What is the likelihood of success of, you know, passage, making it into law for the forfeiture bill and for these two bills about education?

Hill: Well, the foreign medical graduates, you know, our governor is a doctor. I feel like he would be sympathetic. So I’m going to give that one a strong possibility. 

Skills-based hiring, I know that there is concern about the number of vacancies, so I think that’s probably more likely than not to get through. They do have exceptions. So there is a way to get through. But I think that one probably has a fairly decent chance. 

As a forfeiture, I don’t know. That one may be in for a fight because it really only got through the Legislature because of the people who support it so strongly and the legislators who support it so strongly. And it has some pretty strong opposition. And I don’t know which way the governor will go. 

There has been an asset forfeiture bill passed in the distant past, and it got vetoed. So now that wasn’t by Green, Gov. Green. So maybe this governor sees the issue differently. Maybe there’s enough compromise in this bill that he’d be willing to sign it. 

But as a rule, law enforcement agencies do not like these bills, and they tend to argue against them and fight against them. And so the asset forfeiture bill may have a bit more of a challenge in making it all the way to law.

Fidell: Last area, Malia: tax. I’m always interested in tax. There’s a bill mentioned in your newsletter, SB1396. What’s the sense of this particular session on tax, and what’s the provisions of SB1396?

Hill: Well, since I’m about to be super pessimistic, let me start with a high note, which is that going into this session, I was very worried.

We had whispers about people who wanted to roll back the income tax cut. We heard rumors that people wanted to roll back the income tax cut from last year, and we were worried about a bunch of tax hikes coming out. And yet we got through the session with none of that.

We actually saw no major tax hikes with the exception I’m about to say. No effect on income tax. There was a capital gains tax effort that ended up dying. There was a conveyance tax effort that ended up dying. 

There were a number of very complicated bills that wanted to do all sorts of things to the GET ]general excise tax[. They didn’t go through. There was sadly a bill to create GET exemptions that also didn’t go through. So I guess also no great tax cuts. But I will trade that for no huge tax hikes.

So that was a good part. 

But there was one major tax that made it through, and this is the one you mentioned, SB1396, and it’s a TAT ]transitent accommodations tax[ hike. The long and the short of it, it gets a little complicated, but the TAT is going to go up to 11%. 

It’ll also sort of be extended to cruise ships. It’s like a giant calculus problem on how that works. But just suffice that it’s extended to cruise ships. 

And, you know, it’s not as big a hike as when originally proposed. It’s a slightly smaller hike than what they asked for, but this is Gov. Green’s kind of signature legislation, the “green fee.” 

You know, we’ve seen it sort of in different forums over multiple sessions. You know, it started off as this just pure tourist charge, and then it came in as, you know, these other kinds of approaches. And now, finally, it’s just a flat-out TAT hike.

And I think there’s this belief that that’s OK because it just affects tourists. So I will say once more time, it doesn’t just affect tourists. If you use a hotel or, you know, any kind of lodging, it affects you in a very right-out-of-your-pocket way. And it affects the economy. 

You know, making tourism more expensive, making a Hawaii vacation more expensive, does affect businesses in Hawaii. And that means it affects, you know, everyone. 

But it got through anyway, it’s the big tax hike this year. And it had a sort of unstoppable kind of momentum, we’ll say.

Fidell: Yeah, well, you know, it’s money on the table. I think some people are inclined to take whatever’s on the table. The problem is it affects our brand, especially at a time when people in this country, because of the tariffs and otherwise, may not have as much money to travel as they did before. They’re going to make more careful decisions about how much they’re going to spend on a hotel or on a trip to Hawaii. So that may or may not really help us. I’m not sure that it will. 

Let me ask you, was there anything in this session that troubled you? Any other bills you may want to discuss that either troubled you or made you happy, either way?

Hill: Well, we’ve already discussed my frustration with the TAT hike. That did actually trouble me. 

I was disappointed that SB106, that’s the right-to-walk bill. It just doesn’t seem to be able to get it across the finish line. It sort of had early momentum, and then it turned into a sort of pilot program study, which is always a death knell. 

Anytime something turns into a study or a pilot program, you could sort of see hope sort of fade away, and then it just couldn’t get across the finish line at the end.

And then I was also pretty disappointed about the emergency powers reform bills. 

`You know, it’s a sort of wonky issue. It’s very, you know, technical. It’s about the constitutional balance of powers and how the governor uses his emergency powers. And I can get why that’s not the kind of thing that gets people very excited. I think it really only gets the constitutional lawyers excited, and then occasionally, you know, the people who are affected by any specific emergency order.

And, you know, I know it’s strange because I praise the governor’s emergency orders all the time. You know, they threw away red tape and that kind of thing. But I still think that our emergency powers law needs to be reformed so that there’s better balance of power, so that the Legislature has this check on executive power, just sort of philosophically, you know, because you don’t always have a governor that you like what they’re doing, and that’s why you need to check. 

Sometimes you don’t get a governor who you like, what they’re doing. That’s why you need these checks and balances. And those bills got all the way to conference committee, which was exciting, and then they died, so I was pretty disappointed about that.

Fidell: I hope you follow up with it next year. I mean, this is important part of the dialogue over democracy, not only here in Hawaii, but nationally. Emergency powers can be abused or mistreated, misconstrued, if you will. 

I have only one more question, Malia, if I could ask you one more question. It’s a sort of larger policy question. 

So we had the fires in Maui, and for sure we will have other climate change disasters coming, who knows how soon. And the question I put to you is, how are we doing on that? Do we have a reserve? 

The tax reform bill last year would have, you know, cut the amount of funds available to deal with climate change disasters. Do we have enough money? Do we have a way to raise money in case we need — remember that FEMA has been reduced, and the federal government may or may not help us in the case of a tragedy, a disaster. Do we have a way in the state of Hawaii to either retain or raise the money necessary to deal with other climate change disasters?

Hill: Well, you know, they did try to, and they usually do, attempt to appropriate money for the Emergency and Budget Reserve Fund. That’s something you’ll usually see. This year, that’s HB795 in terms of strict appropriations. 

I’m trying to remember how much they end up putting in there. I want to say it’s at least, you know, like constitutionally, it’s something like $1 million depositing every year or something like that, but don’t quote me on that.

So there is a sort of remembering, but they’re required to do that also by the Constitution. So you know, I don’t know how much credit you want to give for being aware of it. 

In total fairness, I will mention that the bill about which I was just complaining, HB1396, the green fee, it is technically — oh sorry, not HB1396, it’s SB1396, my bad — it is technically intended to help address various environmental concerns, climate change mitigation, and also tourism projects, because, sure. ]chuckles[. And so hypothetically, it would create more funding for those kinds of, depending on what you consider climate change mitigation and whether you consider addressing potential disasters and disaster relief as that, which I’m not sure that I don’t know if that’s on anyone’s mind.

The mechanisms exist, but, you know, in terms of, you know, if you’re asking, was this a session where people seemed really forward-thinking about, you know, rainy day and preparing for disasters and such? Less so than last year, I think. 

I think it’s there. It’s the sort of constant thought. I don’t want to accuse the Legislature of being, you know, completely ignoring it, you know. 

Lahaina was still very much on people’s minds this year. The whole issue of, you know, rebuilding and, you know, the question of what would happen with the court case and that kind of thing, that’s still very present. But we definitely saw a lot less conversation about rainy day funds, whether you’re talking about economic disaster or natural disaster, than I have in the past.

Fidell: So many issues, so many things affecting our lives in these islands. And I compliment you on following so many bills ]chuckles[ and dealing with them, and coming up with the policy around them, and talking to the Legislature and the governor about it. 

Anyway, we’ll have to leave it there, Malia. 

Thank you so much to our guest, Malia Blom Hill, policy director of Grassroots Institute. I’m Jay Fidell, host of “Hawaii Together” today, and we’ve been discussing legislative update, legislative bills for the 2025 session. 

Thanks to our viewers for watching. We’ll see you again soon for the next one. Aloha. 

Aloha, Malia.

Hill: Aloha.