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The Hawaii Legislature‘s 2013 session is over, and lawmakers are patting themselves on the back for a job well done.

The accomplishments include repealing the Public Land Development Corporation, requiring hospitals to provide emergency contraception help for sex assault victims and putting millions of dollars toward unfunded liabilities.

As always, there were areas where legislators fell short, including a host of good government measures. There’s always next year.

But consider the following legislative proposals that were also introduced this session and went nowhere:

• Setting for state lawmakers.
• Installing automatic locks on .
• Death penalty sentences for .
• Mandating a financial and of the Department of Education.
• Requiring for the Reapportionment Commission.
• Expanding concussion education and for schools.
• Abolishing annual automobile .
• Banning aerial .
• Providing for initiative, .
• Creating a state for capital improvement projects.

Many of those proposals never even got a hearing, though they may have attracted broad interest.

Why? In large part, because the bills were introduced by Republicans.

One-Party Dominance

It’s obvious why more Republican bills don’t get passed: Hawaii has 24 Democrats in the 25-member Senate, and 44 Democrats in the 51-member House of Representatives.

With super-majorities, Democrats get to decide which bills will be heard. No surprise, then, that they elect to hear their own bills.

The fact that GOP lawmakers saw none of their caucus bills pass this year — meaning the legislation they supported as a group — is also not a new phenomenon, as Civil Beat has reported.

When we ran a 2011 article on the pattern, titled Hawaii Republicans Strike Out at Legislature, then-Minority Leader Gene Ward swiftly responded with an article of his own titled Civil Beat Told Only Part of GOP Story. Ward made several points in defense of his colleagues, including that passing individual bills is not the only indicator of a legislator’s influence and effectiveness.

Nathan Eagle

GOP Senate Minority Leader Sam Slom.

What is different about 2013, however, is that House Democrats reorganized in January with the help of the seven Republicans, because Joe Souki needed their votes to replace Calvin Say as speaker. In turn, several GOP members were rewarded with a couple of vice chair slots.

On the Senate side, meanwhile, the majority gave Minority Leader Sam Slom a vice chair position on a committee, in recognition of Slom’s business expertise.

But the new power did not translate into getting caucus bills passed; many never received a hearing.

None of the 20 bills that were part of the passed. Only three received hearings before quickly being shelved.

In the other chamber, Slom — four times as many bills as all Republicans in the House combined. Many were repackaged measures from previous sessions.

As the only Senate Republican, Slom is a caucus of one. Only seven of his bills received hearings, though several included Democrats as co-sponsors. And just one measure made it to conference committee, where it died.

Hoary Bats

Slom admitted he was disappointed with the outcome of his bills. But he said he cares less about getting credit for legislation than in supporting or opposing bills that help his constituents — something he feels he is a voice for.

Case in point: As a prominent advocate for small business interests, Slom was pleased that the Legislature killed proposals to raise the minimum wage.

Slom also offered this perspective: “A lot of my colleagues on the other side don’t get bills heard or passed either. But I think it is a shame that some of them, like or , don’t get heard year after year.”

Slom said part of the problem with his bills not getting heard or passed is that many must go through the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee, chaired by Clayton Hee. Hee and Slom, to put it mildly, have been known to disagree on many things.

One of Slom’s favorite measures, naming the hoary bat , died again this year, though it did not have to go before Senate Judiciary, as it did .

This time around, the bill passed 17-9 on the Senate floor (Hee voted “no”), but it did not receive a hearing in the House. Slom still thinks Hee had an influence in keeping the bill from moving.

“Senator Hee does not like fact that a haole introduced the bill,” said Slom. “If I went away, I guarantee that the bill would fly. It’s a pretty sad commentary.”

Asked about Slom’s remarks, Hee said via email, “Any questions related to the demise of the Hoary Bat bill should be directed to the House of Representatives and not to me.”

Shared Ideas

House GOP caucus members work as a team as well as individually.

This year, the caucus pushed measures to protect school kids and seniors, help people deal with the cost of living and doing business, and to make government more transparent and to improve elections.

As sometimes happens, policy ideas in GOP bills are also found in Democrats’ bills. For example, the GOP’s that sought to protect elders from financial abuse, is similar to , sponsored by the bipartisan Kupuna Caucus.

The House GOP also called for repeal of the PLDC (as did Slom). Six of the seven House Republicans joined a lot of Democrats in co-sponsoring Democrat Cindy Evan‘s , the vehicle that become the repeal bill.

Minority Leader Aaron Ling Johanson told Civil Beat, “I think we are pleased that some of the things we advocated for are coming to fruition in bills passed, whether proffered by the minority caucus or some other authors.”

Johanson rejected any notion that Republicans lack influence.

“With respect to process, there is a definitely greater receptiveness to our ideas,” he said. “Some of the minority caucus bills actually were heard and moved out of first committee, and that is helpful and appreciated. Some bills of individual minority members passed as well.”

One of those, , is on the governor’s desk. The bill, a bipartisan measure with Johanson as chief sponsor, reforms the state procurement process.

To support his position that House legislators had real success, Johanson’s office passed along a list of four caucus bills that were incorporated into other bills that passed, and a list of bills that came from Republicans but were not caucus measures.

One of Slom’s bills almost passed.

would require that reapportionment be based in part on the total number of permanent residents in the state, and would define “permanent” as individuals counted in the last U.S. Census.

SB 286 passed Hee’s Judiciary (Hee voted in favor) as well as both chambers (Hee voted with reservations), but it was held up late in the conference committee process (where Hee was the Senate’s conferee chair), largely because a lawsuit on counting military personnel and college students in the islands is pending.

Other Republican-backed bills may be too extreme for Democrats.

Slom, for example, introduced bills banning partial-birth abortion, repealing the 10-round capacity limit on detachable ammunition magazines and allowing police chiefs to both license the carrying of concealed pistols and to openly carry firearms.

But other Slom ideas that might have attracted support in the hearing process were not considered. Two possibilities: a bill requiring the Commission on Salaries to before approving pay raises, and a bill that proposes a constitutional amendment asking that regular sessions of the Legislature occur only rather than annually.