������Ƶ

If there’s a discernible theme from the recently concluded legislative session, it’s this:

It wasn’t bad.

In fact, by some measures, it was pretty good and compared favorably to many past sessions that current and longtime political observers recall.

Several long-suffering issues finally got some overdue attention, and no small number of bad ideas were sent packing, though, as always, legislators couldn’t find the nerve to do right by the people in multiple critical areas.

Without a doubt, at the top of the list of this year’s accomplishments is a bill that will provide . Sensing growing anger among educators and parents after a sweltering 2015 that too often left Hawaii classrooms unacceptably hot, Gov. David Ige, Senate President Ron Kouchi and House Speaker Joe Souki jumped on the issue early and built consensus around a $100 million appropriation that ultimately passed with unanimous support in both houses.

If work begins immediately and stays on schedule during the summer months, the beginning of the 2016-17 school year could feel like a breath of fresh — and much cooler — air for many students and teachers. Legislators and Ige are to be commended for finally addressing a serious need left unmet by too many elected leaders before them.

Perhaps less expected but no less welcome was the passage of multiple bills addressing the state’s homelessness emergency and one of its biggest drivers, the lack of affordable housing.

, for instance, requires the construction of 22,500 affordable housing units over the next decade — an average of 2,250 a year for 10 years. It was one of nearly 20 bills that made it to conference committee this year targeting various aspects of homelessness and housing. The budget bill contained tens of millions of dollars in further specific appropriations for shovel-ready housing projects, the Rental Housing Revolving Fund, Dwelling Unit Revolving Fund, the Housing First homelessness initiative and more.

In all, nearly $100 million will be put toward affordable housing and $12 million specifically for homelessness with Ige’s approval of the budget.

Legislators also moved in a welcome direction on Department of Hawaiian Home Lands funding, appropriating nearly $24 million, enough to satisfy a revised court order that originally required a $28 million investment and 2 1/2 times the amount originally requested by Ige. That not only represents a small measure of justice for Native Hawaiians, it will help in the homelessness/affordable housing crisis, where Native Hawaiians are overrepresented.

In other points of progress, the Legislature appropriated funding to help the state prevent the spread of Zika virus and dengue fever; authorized a throughout Hawaii; approved $2.5 million to help Wahiawa General Hospital keep its doors open; authorized (though they won’t begin until 2019, for no good reason); and other products from endangered species; and finally took a timid, tepid step forward on police reform with a bill that authorizes a review board to investigate in-custody deaths and police shootings.

Disappointing Decisions, Important Actions Deferred

We were far less enthusiastic about the resolution of the most contentious issue of the session, , which allows Alexander & Baldwin to continue to divert Maui stream water for agriculture uses, even while it appeals a court decision that declared that diversion illegal.

Rather than continue renewing A&B’s “holdover lease” on those water rights each year, legislators opted to grant a three-year lease. That should provide sufficient time for resolution of the court case over whether the past practice was illegal and for A&B will make good on its promise to move from water-intensive sugar to other, less thirsty agricultural endeavors.

While there’s no doubt that A&B is an important employer in Maui and has major agricultural land holdings in areas with little water, the very public way in which the company leverages special treatment over the objections of ordinary citizens leaves a bitter taste in many people’s mouths. HB 2501 is a particularly regrettable example of that.

Lawmakers acted more thoughtfully in killing multiple other bills, including nearly everything proposed by committee chairs Rep. Isaac Choy and Sen. Gil Keith-Agaran.

Choy aimed a flotilla of bills at the University of Hawaii, none of them good. Most notable: Bills that would have excused UH Board of Regents members from having their and an unrelated measure that would have targeting homeless people statewide.

Not to be outdone, Keith-Agaran introduced three bills that would have seen Hawaii politicize the judicial branch of government with elections for judges. Here’s hoping both lawmakers, neither of whom has drawn an opponent for this fall’s elections, show up with better ideas next year.

Even with the welcome progress on the measures noted above, legislators swung and missed on the following big issues.

• Jail Funding. Honolulu’s aged jail, the Oahu Community Correctional Center, desperately needs to be replaced and capacity expanded to end the highly problematic practice of exporting our prisoners to private, mainland facilities. would have done that and provided money to relocate the Maui Community Correctional Center but legislators killed it in conference committee. At least they didn’t overlook the matter entirely: Legislators appropriated $12.5 million in design and other construction monies to begin the replacement process for OCCC and another $5.4 million to study moving the facility. For MCCC, the budget contains $17.5 million for design costs and $7.5 million to expand the current facility in its current location. Small progress.
• Prescribing Rights. Nine years after the Legislature passed a similar bill, only to have Gov. Linda Lingle veto it, the House that would have granted limited prescribing rights to specially trained and educated psychologists. Though the bill required any such psychologist to only prescribe in collaboration with a patient’s primary care physician, Rep. Richard Creagan, himself a physician with degrees in psychology, circulated irresponsible and hysterical warnings against the “unethical and murderous bill” and the dangers of “BIG PHARMA.” Creagan’s unhinged rant unfortunately worked. Lawmakers should be ashamed for once again leaving the plight of mental health patients around Hawaii who can’t get psychiatric care completely and unacceptably unaddressed.
• Body Cameras. Though as noted above lawmakers moved forward on a review board for incidents involving cops and deaths, they killed the : Funding for body cameras for law enforcement officers throughout the islands. How many more cell phone videos will have to surface of cops behaving illegally before legislators will fund technology now commonplace in many jurisdictions, cameras that not only can catch sketchy police activity but protect cops against false allegations?

Of course, there were other significant pieces of legislative action or inaction, too numerous to mention here, that Civil Beat will focus on in coming days and weeks.

For now, it’s appropriate to note that it’s the rare legislator or voter who gets everything he or she wants from any legislative session. As is the case every year, of the thousands of bills proposed in this session, only a small minority passed. But the people of Hawaii can be reassured that by sine die, legislators had acted responsibly on serious matters important to us all.

Their to-do list for 2017, however, is already significant, and we’re among many who hope that the resolve shown on some issues this year will return for another meaningful session next year.