Hawaii House Surprises Senate With Counter Offer on Kakaako Makai
One never knows what surprises might come in the final days of conference committee at the Hawaii Legislature.
On Thursday, Rep. Cindy Evans had a surprise for Sen. Maile Shimabukuro on . The measure would give the Office of Hawaiian Affairs authority to ask the Hawaii Community Development Authority to let OHA build residential on property in Kakaako Makai.
Evans suggested an amendment to SB 3122 that would allow for the building of residential towers in the area, but only on a six-block stretch along Ala Moana Boulevard. The land includes two of the three parcels OHA wants to build on; the other parcels belong to Kamehameha Schools.
Eyebrows raised, Shimabukuro and her fellow conferees on SB 3122 — Clayton Hee, Brickwood Galuteria and Donovan Dela Cruz — huddled together, and Hee whispered at length in Shimabukuro’s ear.
“This is a major change from the previous draft,” Shimabukuro said to Evans. “I think we will take this under advisement.”
There were other surprises, too, Thursday, as the clocked ticked toward a Friday 6 p.m. deadline for bills to advance to a final round of votes next week. In some ways, they were all related.
More on that later.
Surprise No. 2 came when David Ige, chairman of Senate Ways and Means, spent much of his day trying to come up with a way to secure $40 million to protect from development more than 600 acres at the Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu’s North Shore.
Ige and Gov. Neil Abercrombie clashed over whether the Legislature should have budgeted for the money — as the administration argues — or whether the expenditure came as a surprise in the waning days of session, as Ige claims.
At 5 p.m., Ige, joined by Senate President Donna Mercado Kim, told reporters that he had been unfairly portrayed as the “roadblock” to a deal. In fact, he said he had long supported a Turtle Bay agreement.
Ige’s proposition involves restructuring the $33 million in debt service on the Hawaii Convention Center that comes from the transient accommodations tax, and taking a portion of the savings in interest from that restructuring to pay for the floating of $40 million in revenue bonds.
It would not involve new taxes or fees, said Ige. Most importantly, it would not touch the $1.4 billion for capital improvement projects — “the beauty” of the proposal, as Ige put it.
The House has insisted this week that it would not allow a share of coveted CIP money to be used to pay for the Turtle Bay conservation easement. Ige said the inability to “close” the CIP budget has held up the state’s overall budget.
“Do we sacrifice a school or a classroom building or a building at the university in order to acquire the easement?” he said. “You could build one and a half elementary schools for $40 million.”
Reps. Cindy Evans and Faye Hanohano at a Kakaako Makai conference meeting April 23.
Ige said he and his colleagues were “still working through the mechanics” of his proposal. Within minutes of Ige floating his plan, however, House Speaker Joe Souki poured a bucket of cold water over it.
“This is a major project with a significant amount of money — $40 million,” he said in a statement. “It would be unwise to rush to a decision in the final days of the legislative session. We only learned of the agreement just a couple of days ago. We have not had any discussion with the governor’s office on this. We do not know any of the details of the agreement.”
Souki added, “I believe this matter can be taken up next session after we have had a chance to discuss the details with the governor’s office and had the opportunity to vet the arrangement.”
Next session will be after the fall elections, though, and the Turtle Bay dispute is sure to surface in the Democratic primary contest between Ige and Abercrombie.
And then there was surprise No. 3 — the bill to . Hee made yet another offer to Rep. Mark Nakashima — his third this week; Nakashima offered one of his own just a week ago.
The latest proposal would increase the wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 by 2017 and increase the tip credit from 25 cents to 75 cents. Businesses could then deduct the tip credit from workers who earn a minimum of $7 above the minimum wage.
Hee told Nakashima his office had been flooded with calls insisting the wage be $10.10 and not 10 cents less, as the House prefers and the amount that Hee himself agreed to just the day before.
“We are passing along the good vibrations from the public,” Hee told Nakashima, adding that the callers should have called Nakashima instead.
Nakashima just smiled politely and said he was pleased to see that the Senate was moving toward the House’s position on the tip credit, the issue that broke a minimum wage deal a year ago.
Hee later told Sherry Menor-McNamara, the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii — it doesn’t like the idea of a minimum wage increase — that the Senate’s latest offer would give businesses “half the manapua. We still want half, but we give you half.”
Some House leaders say privately that they don’t want to budge from the $10 wage by 2018, and Senate leaders have known all along that they can still accept the last House draft on SB 3122, so they have nothing to lose by trying for a better deal. Whether a bill is agreed upon tomorrow morning, when conferees are set to meet once again, or next week is not clear.
Rep. Mark Nakashima and Sen. Clayton Hee during minimum wage talks April 23.
As for the Kakaako Makai bill, conferees on SB 3122 met again at 6 p.m., when Shimabukuro told Evans that the Senate had “a number of concerns” about the proposed House conference draft and that she wasn’t sure “whether that’s going to fly.”
Shimabukuro said the Senate would prefer allowing residential development on just the two OHA parcels in Kakaako makai of Ala Moana Boulevard, and not eight parcels, as the House plan calls for. Kamehameha Schools, the county and the public, she said, had not weighed in on the idea.
“I am concerned about the ramifications of such a drastic change,” Shimabukuro said.
Evans responded that the House “understands that it’s controversial to see changes to the makai, but I think the House is open to looking at change.”
The conferees broke for 6:30 p.m. floor sessions and then came back well after 7 p.m. Things went quickly.
Evans and Shimabukuro said they would make sure all the conferees received all the proposed conferences drafts, including a new one from the Senate that calls for allowing residential development on just the two OHA parcels along Ala Moana Boulevard.
Privately, leaders in both chambers told Civil Beat that they were unsure whether SB 3122 will survive. With all the proposed last-minute conference drafts, each side can make the argument that it was open to a solution but that the other side rejected it.
The House’s solution seemed bizarre to some. Michelle Matson, a member of the group Save Our Kakaako who was at the meetings, called the House’s counter offer “appalling.”
“It would allow six blocks along Ala Moana to be a wall of concrete 400 feet high,” she told Civil Beat.
Of note: All three of Thursday’s surprises involved to one degree or another Clayton Hee. In addition to the minimum wage and the Kakaakao Makai bills, Hee has been directly involved with the efforts to preserve Turtle Bay, which is part of his district.
There were other surprises Thursday. The ukulele will not be the state’s official stringed instrument, for example.
Looking ahead, based on Thursday’s events, Friday at the Capitol could be quite a roller coaster. There are dozens and dozens of bills awaiting action, including a good many that need approval from House Finance and Senate Ways and Means. But they won’t meet to take up the state budget until 10:15 a.m.
Expect more surprises.
Contact Chad Blair via email at cblair@civilbeat.com or follow him on Twitter at .
