A bill allowing Oahu consumers to set off sparklers and fountains on New Year’s Eve has been deferred by a Honolulu City Council committee.
Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga, who chairs the Public Safety and Economic Development Committee, said members of her committee decided to hold off a vote on Bill 5 Tuesday because they want to review what impacts the new legislation might have.
Current law allows only firecrackers at New Year’s and Independence Day and only through a $25 permit allowing an adult to purchase up to 5,000 common "red" firecrackers.
The bill introduced by Council members Ikaika Anderson and Ann Kobayashi would allow consumers to use the same permit to buy up to 300 sparklers or fountains.
Fukunaga, in an effort to make the bill more palatable to opponents, proposed curbing the amount of permits each adult could purchase to one. Anderson said he was OK with the amendment, and further proposed that sparklers and fountains only be allowed on New Year’s Eve and not on Independence Day.
Officials with both the Honolulu Fire and Police departments restated they oppose any easing of existing fireworks laws.
Assistant Fire Chief Socrates Bratakos, responding to claims that fireworks are part of Hawaii’s unique cultural heritage, said existing law already allows red firecrackers, "which has history going back to China for hundreds, if not thousands of years, unlike fountains and sparklers."
Meanwhile, the number of people getting injured from fireworks on Oahu has dropped since the restrictions began in 2012, Bratakos said.
But Thomas Berger, an attorney representing American Promotional Events and local company TNT Fireworks, said limiting people to one permit would result in less smoke. As for safety concerns, recent reports by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Fire Protection Association both concluded that fountains are the least dangerous of consumer fireworks.
The National Fire Protection Association’s 2013 report determined that fountains account for about 1 percent of all reported injuries, compared with 14 percent for small firecrackers, Berger said.
Also Tuesday the Council Executive Matters and Legal Affairs Committee deferred Resolution 14-91, which would ask voters in this fall’s election to change the language in the City Charter governing its Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund to allow for money to be used for purposes other than land banking such as access and other infrastructure improvements.
Executive Matters Chairman Ron Menor said there is still time for that measure to make it onto the ballot this year.
