Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

The House Finance Committee passed SB755 with amendments very late last night. Neither the amendments nor the committee report are available yet on the Capitol website (in fact, the last committee report posted on this bill refers to one of its previous lives as a gambling bill).

Depending on what’s in the amendments, the bill, if passed into law, is likely to have the opposite effect from its proponents’ intent—instead of speeding up economic development, it could mire projects in legal actions. This point was raised a couple of times during testimony.

The committee hearing was a potential setup for future lawsuits. While the title of the bill is “Relating to Economic Development,” little to nothing in the hearing related to economic development. Instead, questions by committee members were focused on dismantling Hawaii’s environmental protections. Not a single dime was identified that would be earned by doing so.

Upon questioning by Rep. Ward, asking for that “Project X” that the bill would benefit, the representative from the Department of Transportation was unable to come up with anything with a money value. The best that she could do was to say that it would simply the DOT internal processes by removing some of the redundancy—that is, they would not have to prepare both federal and state paperwork.

A few testifiers noted that by bypassing the environmental protections provided in Hawaii’s state constitution, projects that are exempted from Chapter 343 (of Superferry fame) could be challenged by opponents. This could result not in a speedup of “shovel ready” projects, but a slowdown.

The only shovel-ready projects mentioned were bridge repairs, and it was also noted that emergency exemptions are and have been available to the DOT if necessary for that purpose.

Gary Hooser, Director of the Office of Environmental Control, testified that there were no projects currently submitted by state agencies that are waiting for exemptions.

In other words, whether or not SB755 passes, there is no economic difference.

So why pass the bill? Rep. Sharon Har was the most aggressive in promoting the bill, even to the point of extensively questioning a citizen testifier on the bill line-by-line. Har held that the community has a misunderstanding about the bill as a “blanket” exemption from environmental protections. Rep. Ward interrupted the interrogatory with a point of order to the Chair.

Still, neither Rep. Har nor anyone else on the committee was able to put a dollar value on the economic benefit. So what’s left … is a blanket exemption to environmental protections. The `Olelo video of the hearing should be posted and could be used to demonstrate that the legislative intent was to figure out how to find exemptions. And therein lies more lawsuit fodder.

The language of this bill has morphed from a nice enough bill to a gambling bill and now to an environmental exemption bill. The new language has not been heard for the required three readings in each house, although the Legislature argues that if the title is the same, it is enough. And finally, the bill did not demonstrate any economic development, since it is focused on environmental exemptions. A judge may not agree with me, but the irregularity of the House process could conceivably bolster any case filed against the exemptions it provides.

So who voted for this bill?

The votes were as follows: 15 Ayes: Representative(s) Oshiro, M. Lee, Choy, Cullen, Giugni, Har, Hashem, Ichiyama, Jordan, Kawakami, Morikawa, Tokioka, Yamashita; Ayes with reservations: Representative(s) C. Lee, Marumoto; 2 Noes: Representative(s) Riviere, Ward; and Excused: none.

The bill next goes to conference, unless the Senate agrees to adopt its language as-is.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 4/03/2012 10:28:00 AM