Senate Standing Committee on Ways and Means

Including the audio.

Going to start with 10:46 since we have an audience. This meeting, including the audio and video of remote participants, is being streamed live on YouTube. You will find links to our viewing options for our meetings on live and on demand video page of our website. This is decision making. Written testimony is available on our website to review.

You will see. You'll find the link on the status page of each measure. Okay, so first item is House Bill 309. Recommendation is to pass an amendment defecting the date to 2050. Any discussions? If not, chair votes I.

Chair votes I. Vice Chair votes I.

[roll call]

Recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next item, House Bill 344. Recommendation is to pass with amendments. Amending section 2 to change the percentage of electric vehicle charger ready parking stalls from 25% to allow DAGs to determine the number of stalls that are necessary in a new facility, and making conforming amendments to page two, lines five through eight in the preamble. Any discussion?

If not, Chair votes I.

All Members present. Anyone voting no? With reservation? Recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next item, House Bill 423. Recommendation is to pass, unamended. Any discussion? If not, chair votes I.

Anyone voting no? With reservation? Recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next Item, House Bill 596. Recommendation is to pass with amendments defecting the effective date to 2050. And we will add to the Committee Report the Department of Defense's concerns and testimony. Any discussion? If not, chair votes I.

Members present, anyone voting no? With reservation? Recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next item is House Bill 750. There are some concerns that were raised, but we're going to pass this unamended because we don't have time to meet the filing deadline. So we'll add some of those concerns into the Committee Report so the Conference Committee can try to address them. Any discussion? If not, chair votes I.

Anyone voting no? With reservation? Recommendation. Oh, recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next item, House Bill 833. Recommendation is to pass unamended. Any discussion? If not, chair votes I.

All members present. Anyone voting no? With reservation? Recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next item, House Bill 987. 987. Recess.

Okay.

Okay. Next item, House Bill 987. Recommendation is to pass unamended. Any discussion? If not, the chair votes I.

All members present. Anyone voting no? With reservation? Recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next Item, House Bill 988. Recommendation is to pass unamended. Any discussion? If not, chair votes I.

Anyone voting no? With reservation? Recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next Item, House Bill 1161. Recommendation is to pass unamended and we'll let the community report reflect the requested amendments by the Department of Transportation so that the Committee Conference Committee can consider those. Any further discussion? If not, chair votes I.

Anyone voting no? Reservation. Recommendation adopted.

Thank you. Next Item, House Bill 1483. Recommendation is to pass unamended. Any discussion? If not, chair votes I.

Anyone voting no? With reservation? Recommendation adopted.

Thank you.

Okay. Calling to order the 10:45 agenda. So since the governor's office is here, do you guys want to say anything?

No. We'll start our testimony and hope that the committee will amend back to the original.

Because.

Thank you, chair. Will Kane, Office the Governor. So my understanding, and again I would defer to the AG for the actual legal verbiage, but essentially any legal agreement has to be either put forward as accepted or. Or not. So any amendments to this would cause the legal agreement in our view to be dismissed.

So that could be have significant impacts on the state.

Okay. Is there a reason why the administration did not try to include any member of the legislature along the process of while the negotiations were being conducted?

I can't speak to the legal negotiations that happened prior, so I'm not sure why that would occur. I would have to defer again to the Attorney General for that.

Okay. Just because it's $807 million and it almost puts the legislature in a buying because what you're recommending is that we cannot touch the settlement. We just have to rubber stamp it. We have no input.

And so I'm not sure why the Attorney General or who are the negotiators did not at least bring, you know, a representative from each body along the process so that they could inform the members what was going on. So it doesn't just seem like here you gotta rubber stamp it, leave it. You can't even amend it.

You don't have an opinion, you just have to rubber stamp it.

Right. And again, I'm not a lawyer by trade, so again I would defer, but my limited understanding is that these legal negotiations it would have to only be included parties that were settlements to that like actual things.

So the representatives for you folks would be the Attorney General, for all of us, for the administration and for the the state. But I would defer why you specifically weren't, you know, legislators weren't brought into that fact. I'd have to again defer to the attorney.

Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that we have to somehow force a way into the negotiations. What I'm saying is that as the negotiations were being conducted, there weren't any regular meetings with the legislature to inform us about the progress and to at least try to see what concerns we may have had during that whole negotiating process.

It was done without any legislative input, and then it was just introduced into a bill asking us to rubber stamp it.

Sure, absolutely.

So I'm not sure if you guys can.

So again, my, my understanding is that when those negotiations are happening, that they are precluded by the judge and by the process to only include the legislature.

Yeah. I'm not saying we have to be part of that.

Okay.

When the. When the Attorney General was negotiating with the other parties, there could have been a sidebar discussion with the legislature or members of the legislature to inform us every step along the way.

Sure. Okay. I, I will definitely communicate that to the.

Because that's why we're here now. Because you guys are asking us to adopt the Attorney General's amendments because a previous committee had made amendments to try to address legislative concerns. And so now the committee. Now we're having to undo the committee's amendments because the administration is saying you can't do that.

Right.

But then we weren't included from the beginning to try to incorporate our concerns at all. So now we're having to undo that. So that's why we're having to reconsider. So I just want to make that clear as to. This could have been avoided if some, if there was a little bit more communication along the way.

Absolutely. I will definitely convey those concerns, chair.

Yeah, I guess I'm concerned because this is a public process. It is the taxpayers monies and all, all legislation go through public hearings and they should be able to be able to provide testimony or have concerns. And a lot of those concerns come through us.

So for, for us not to be kept updated as to what's going on and that we just have to rubber stamp a bill, that's that's not a democratic process. So I have concerns. Thank you.

Thank you, senator.

Any other questions for governor's office?

I, I agree with the chair that there seems to be a level of lack of transparency in this entire process. And even as we stand now and say puts forth its $800 million, it's not clear how Hawaiian Electric is going to pay off its share of the $2 billion judgment.

What I understand, they have the first billion dollar covered, but none of us in this room have any idea how the second billion dollars will be covered. And if they don't cover it, how the whole deal falls apart.

So, in response to follow up to Chair Dela Cruz, even as we move forward on this, I mean, it would be helpful if the administration, as you discussed with HECo, how are you going to. How they're going to pay off the full four installments up to $2 billion.

I think that would be helpful for us as well, to see if we actually going to have this deal consummated or if they're going to fall short and be negligent in their portion of the $4 billion judgment.

Yeah, well. Well, I'll definitely follow up with the Attorney General and the Governor. We can figure out how we can do this.

Thank you.

So once this passes, I guess if it passes this, we won't be. That means that's the end for any legal issues regarding Lahaina.

Thank you, Senator.

I can't answer that question. I. I'm not. I don't have that information. I have to defer to the Attorney General. But I can follow up. This is strictly for the settlement, the global settlement, but I don't know what other outstanding legal issues there may be.

Okay. So I didn't realize global was limiting. I thought almost global was comprehensive.

Yeah. And again, I can't speak to the legal aspects, but I can definitely have the Attorney General prepare a response to these questions and provide that information to you folks directly.

Okay. Any other questions for Governor's Office? Thank you. Okay. Chair is going to recommend reconsidering previous action and recommend to pass with amendments, adopting the Attorney General's suggested amendments to remove language from pages 7, lines 3 to 17.

And we'll let the committee report reflect the previous amendments, which were trying to address concerns in the committee report as well as other concerns brought up. Any further discussion? If not, chair votes I.

Chair votes I. Vice Chair votes I.

[roll call]

Thank you.

Recommendation adopted.