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The special session to legalize gay marriage in Hawaii cost more than triple the estimate, but state lawmakers generally agree it was money well spent.

The session, which opened Oct. 28 and ended Nov. 12, cost $76,800 on the legislative side, according to the House and Senate chief clerks.

The initial estimate was $25,800, based on the assumption that the session would only take five days.

But the session stretched on to accommodate more than 1,000 people testifying at marathon committee hearings on and lawmakers speaking for hours on the merits of giving gay couples the same rights as straight couples while protecting religious freedoms.

“Participation in a democracy is a good thing, but it’s not free,” House Judiciary Chair Karl Rhoads told Civil Beat last week. “If the hearing was three days shorter, it would’ve cost proportionally less. But in the broad scheme of things, I’m glad people got to have their say and the bill definitely reflected the testimony from all those long hours.”

There was a significant cost for security too, which involved dozens of sheriff’s deputies working overtime to keep the peace at the Capitol Building where thousands of people rallied for and against the bill over the course of the special session. That cost won’t be available for another few weeks, according to Sheriff Robin Nagamine.

In calculating the Legislature’s cost, House Chief Clerk Brian Takeshita said all responsibilities were handled by the permanent staff “working long past normal office hours and by volunteers who generously gave of their time to help.”

As a result, he said, the additional costs borne by the House and Senate were primarily per diem paid to neighbor island members for Oahu lodging and the flights they took to travel between their home islands and Oahu.

With 24 neighbor island senators and representatives being given a daily allowance of $175 each per day, Takeshita said, the daily cost was $4,200. Multiply that by 16 days in the session; the cost for per diem was $67,200.

Two round-trip plane tickets per neighbor island member at an estimated cost of $200 each adds $9,600.

That puts the additional cost to the Legislature for the special session — above normal interim operating costs — at about $76,800.

“In this country we don’t put a price tag on freedom and we don’t wait to see if people’s basic rights pencil out,” Rep. Chris Lee told Civil Beat when asked about the cost of the special session.

Having the benefit of hindsight, Rhoads said Gov. Neil Abercrombie was right to call the Legislature into special session to take up gay marriage.

“It would’ve been very, very difficult to have done this during a regular session,” Rhoads said.

There were 641 bills referred to the Judiciary Committee last regular session and about 200 were heard at a time, Rhoads said.

“I don’t know how we would’ve handled this much interest in one bill and still gotten anything done,” he said.