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House Speaker Calvin Say is raising the ire of environmental activists by sidestepping normal legislative procedures on a bill they think would weaken environmental protection in the state.

The measure could exempt many state and county projects from environmental reviews, something Say has been saying is needed to boost economic development and create jobs.

But Robert Harris, executive director of the Sierra Club, called Say’s maneuvering unusual and a “backdoor way” of circumventing the legislative process. Harris has been trying to block the bill since it was first brought up.

was originally referred to the House Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection and the Committee on Economic Revitalization and Business. But the committee chairs had little interest in the bill and weren’t planning to schedule the necessary hearings that would allow the bill to move through the Legislature.

So Say asked those committee chairs to approve sending the bill to the Finance Committee, which they did. The committee needs to schedule a hearing on the bill by the end of the month to keep it alive.

Say acknowledged that he had moved the bill to keep it alive. He defended the bill as a way of creating jobs and stimulating the economy.

“I advise people to read the bill before making conclusions,” he wrote in an email to Civil Beat.

But it’s not going over well with the Sierra Club.

Harris shared his views with House members in a letter he sent out earlier this week.

The “decision to re-refer HB 1893 appears to be an attempt to get around the normal legislative process so as to favor bills you support,” wrote Harris in the letter addressed to Say. “We trust you agree this is an inappropriate way to govern the House of Representatives.”

Committee Chairs Defend Decision

Rep. Denny Coffman, chair of the Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection, said that the bill was way down on his list of priorities and that even if it does pass, it won’t have much impact because it’s so narrowly constructed. He didn’t say that he was opposed to the bill, agreed that it needed to go to the Finance Committee.

“Unfortunately the way things work here, things move too fast, and I know the Speaker needed to have it heard,” said Coffman. So he signed-off on it.

But Harris told Civil Beat that it was important for the bill to go through Coffman’s committee.

“This is a very complex issue,” he said. “Normally you would want it to go to (the energy and environment committee) because those are the experts.”

Coffman said that there were still a lot of hurdles for the bill. If it passes the House it will then have to go to the Senate where it will likely be heard by the Senate Energy and Environment Committee.

Rep. Angus McKelvey, who chairs the Committee on Economic Revitalization & Business, said that he supported Say’s bill, but that the measure didn’t fit with the big picture issues that his committee was tackling this session.

“It wasn’t a top priority,” he said. “We’re looking at the core economic matrix — aerospace, broadband, construction through the procurement process. The bill had nothing to do with anything at all as far as this goes.”

But McKelvey said the bill was important, particularly for Maui where it could help speed up fixing structural problems with the runway at the Kahului airport and the highway along the west side that is falling into the ocean.

“It should be a real concern to the environmental community,” he said of the projects. “You don’t want to put the governor between a rock and a hard place by forcing him to declare a state of emergency.”

Sierra Club Skeptical

Harris said that environmental reviews rarely hold up a project. Out of thousands of government projects last year, he said, only a couple of dozen needed the environmental review to begin with.

“So why are we doing this?” he said.

Harris, who is also an attorney, said that the bill would mark the first time that state and county projects could be exempt from environmental reviews in the law’s 30-year history.

The legislation would allow the governor and county mayors to pick projects that could be exempt from the review. The projects are intended to have a completion date of the end of 2015.

And it’s one of a number of bills this session that he says intend to roll back environmental protection regulations.

“I think this is indicative of a host of bills that are kind of similar,” he said. “It’s plain that this is foremost in the House leadership’s mind to get through here. I don’t think people realize the scope and scale of how many of these types of bills are moving forward.”

You can read Robert Harris’ letter to House members below: