Will 2027 be the year for fiscal notes to accompany bills in Hawaii?
by Jonathan Helton, Grassroot Institute, October 20, 2026
The idea that every bill ought to come with a price tag should not be revolutionary.
Actually, it isn’t. Hawaii and Vermont are the only states without some kind of law on the books mandating that so-called fiscal notes accompany any proposed bill that could impact the budget — whether through spending funds or generating them.
Lawmakers in Hawaii have unfortunately not embraced such reforms that would give their constituents and colleagues more information on the financial effects of proposed legislation.
Any consumer knows that price tags are an important part of doing business. No one loads up their cart at Costco, Long’s or the local hardware store without a clue what each item will cost them. But that is essentially what our state and county lawmakers do when passing legislation.
The solution is to require that all bills come with fiscal notes or fiscal impact statements that provide information regarding how much the proposal might increase or decrease revenue, affect local government budgets or change state employment.
Hawaii lawmakers have previously introduced bills to require fiscal notes. These efforts have never gotten far, but a resolution asking the Legislative Reference Bureau to study fiscal notes did finally pass in 2025.
The LRB released its report in January of this year. The bureau examined the process for fiscal notes followed by five other states and the District of Columbia and noted several best practices for implementing them.
The best practices outlined in the report are that fiscal notes should be prepared by a nonpartisan office, apply to most bills, include the long-term financial effects of legislation, be revised if the bill is significantly amended and be easily accessible to the public.
The LRB also recommended that the Legislature establish a working group or committee to review its findings, but no legislation to set one up was heard in the 2026 session.
Since then, policymakers in two counties have considered establishing fiscal notes for their county councils.
The Honolulu Charter Commission received three separate submissions requesting that voters be given the chance this year to weigh in on whether city bills should have fiscal notes. Those amendments — submitted by the Grassroot Institute, the Honolulu Office of the Managing Director and Council Chair Tommy Waters — were all eventually rejected.
So while the City Council itself could establish a fiscal note process, Honolulu voters will not have the opportunity to consider these amendments in 2026.
In Hawaiʻi County, fiscal notes might finally have their day. Bill 171 (2026), introduced this past summer, would require the county director of finance to provide fiscal impact statements for any county bill likely to have budget implications.
Hawaiʻi County Code technically already features a process for requiring fiscal impact statements, but it is apparently seldom used.
Bill 171 (2026) is scheduled to be heard on Nov. 5. If the measure passes, perhaps the state Legislature and other counties could use it as a template to introduce their own long-overdue fiscal note legislation in 2027.