Few bright spots in a session that treaded water
Another legislative session has drawn to a close, handing over to taxpayers the usual mixed bag. On three key issues — affordable housing, healthcare and energy independence — the session may be remembered as much for the ones that got away as for those that lawmakers, in the end, were able to bag.
The Legislature did best where there was focus and even some accord between lawmakers and the executive branch of government. Of the three categories, energy bills seemed to make the most progress. Perhaps the popular support, fueled by rising oil and gas bills, kept the heat turned up.
Even in this sector, however, there were lapses, and where healthcare and housing are concerned, the temperature was tepid at best.
Here's a look at the issues in turn, starting from a low note:
The Legislature this year allowed to lapse a law that funds the Rental Housing Trust Fund with an allocation from the conveyance tax, which is paid on each home-sale transaction. It's pointless to lose a year of accumulations to that fund when the need for affordable rentals is so great. Lawmakers should renew that provision at the earliest opportunity.
It's also disappointing to see HB 2512, which would have expedited review of affordable housing projects and established a self-help housing fund, stall in the Senate.
The Lingle administration faults lawmakers for investing only half of the $50 million the governor requested for affordable rentals and for-sale homes. This was a tough year, budgetwise, but in this critical area the state needs to keep up the pace of providing new inventory.
The budget does include $5.7 million (to be leveraged by matching federal funds) to help hospitals cover the uninsured; also, Keiki Care health insurance was extended to children of former Aloha Airlines employees who ordinarily wouldn't qualify.
But efforts to enact sensible medical tort reform failed again this year. The Senate wouldn't even pass a concurrent resolution calling for a study on how tort reform could affect healthcare access.
There's hope, at least, in the bill creating a Hawaii Health Corps Program working group that will study incentives to encourage medical practice in underserved areas. Although the focus of incentives are loan repayment programs and stipends, the group is charged with developing a plan that more broadly addresses physician and dentist shortages.
The group will include state health, human services and business officials as well as delegates from the John A. Burns School of Medicine.
Perhaps a plan that crafts effective reforms will emerge. Having abandoned tort reform, the Legislature must find other ways to improve the climate in which doctors deliver care.
Fortunately, good sense prevailed, the issues were unlinked and each was allowed to pass on its own merits.
Lawmakers deserve applause for boosting renewable energy, both in the water-heater bill and in HB 2863, which consolidates the county and state permitting processes for siting, development, construction and operation of a renewable energy facility. They managed to do so without sacrificing the public's opportunity to be notified about, and comment on, projects in their area.
In addition, photovoltaic generators are now permissible uses on marginal agricultural land; ag lands also can be used for agricultural-energy facilities. Finally, homeowners and businesses now have greater incentives to install photovoltaic units, under new net-metering allowances.
Lawmakers could have compounded that success further, however. It's unclear why other legitimate proposals fell by the wayside. A refundable tax credit that would have helped lower-income residents retrofit their homes for solar died in a conference committee. If this state is truly committed to making great strides away from fossil fuels, it makes little sense to skip this step.
In all, lawmakers did make progress on this and other key concerns, but they seemed to shrink from pulling out the stops to advance some of the most important goals of the session.
That's why the Democratic leadership lacked credibility when it sought to blunt the governor's emergency powers — it too often failed to strike while the iron is hot. The session just past illustrates exactly that.
