Key state lawmakers in the House still want Oahu’s rail tax cut in half if it is to be extended — and they also aim to put an end to any talk of neighbor islands enacting a surcharge to help fund transportation-related projects in their respective counties.
Rep. Sylvia Luke (D, Punchbowl-Pauoa-Nuuanu) made those proposals Thursday during House and Senate members’ first conference meeting to hash out House Bill 134. The measure looks to extend Oahu’s general excise tax surcharge and help the island’s public transit project deal with a budget shortfall that’s as deep as $910 million.
The bill’s most recent draft, passed earlier this month by the Senate, calls for the 0.5 percent surcharge to be extended five years through 2027. It would prevent rail officials from using those dollars on future operations of the 20-mile, 21-station system and instead limit the funds to finishing the project underway.
Luke, the House’s Finance Committee chairwoman, proposed trimming the surcharge to 0.25 percent and extending it 25 years starting in 2016. The idea resembled an earlier proposal passed this session by the House, which called for cutting the tax in half without setting a time limit.
"We want a stronger commitment from the City and County of Honolulu" in helping to fund rail’s completion, Luke said. Throughout this legislative session, as they’ve weighed whether to extend the tax, lawmakers have said they want to see more "skin in the game" from the city officials.
Responding to the House proposal to trim the tax, Sen. Clarence Nishihara (D, Waipahu-Pearl City) said the Senate aimed to provide the project with a "full tank of gas, versus a half a tank."
HB 134 would also allow the neighboring counties — not just Honolulu — another chance to enact a surcharge if they saw fit, but on Thursday Luke said that part of the bill should be removed. She told the conferees that she’d received strong objections from some Council members on neighboring islands. After Thursday’s meeting she declined to say who those members were because she wasn’t sure whether the correspondences were meant to be confidential.
Mayors from the neighboring counties have expressed support for a surcharge to fund their islands’ projects, but Luke said Council members there would play a big role in whether such an increase actually passes.
"We just wanted to take a step back," Luke said after the session. The conferees will revisit the issue Monday.
In February the state attorney general’s office recommended to lawmakers that a rail tax extension measure also include the neighboring counties. The move, according to the attorney general’s office, would help avoid potential court challenges, arguing that limiting the surcharge extension to only Oahu would violate the state Constitution.
The proposal to trim the surcharge in half could also affect how quickly rail officials would be able to extend the 20-mile line. Rail leaders, including Mayor Kirk Caldwell, have expressed interest in building the line to the University of Hawaii campus in Manoa and west to the heart of Kapolei, as the project was originally envisioned.
A rail tax measure that members of the Senate considered earlier in this session would have extended the 0.5 percent surcharge for 25 years in order to help fund those route extensions. But members of the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee later reduced that to five years, saying that any extension now should be used only to complete the original project.
Earlier Thursday, Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation officials reported that the project received $65 million in surcharge revenues, which is about $9 million more than they had projected for the most recent quarter. However, despite that uptick, they’re still projecting that total collections from the GET surcharge could ultimately fall short of projections by about $100 million.
Officials estimated in rail’s 2012 financial plan that the project would net nearly $3.3 billion in GET collections.
