A bill that would bar the governor and the state’s four mayors from holding a second job while in office is again moving through the state Legislature.

House Bill 71, which makes it unlawful for a governor or mayor to hold outside employment or to receive any salary, fees or earnings while in office, was approved Thursday by the House Labor and Public Employment Committee.

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell has served on the Territorial Savings Bank board since 2007 and receives a base salary of about $49,000 annually. Caldwell has continued with the post despite criticism that first arose during his 2016 re-election campaign that it posed a conflict of interest.

Caldwell said there is no conflict since Territorial does no business with the city and that the job only requires him to be at board meetings for a few hours one day each month.

It’s widely assumed that the bill was targeting Caldwell when it was introduced in the 2017 Legislature. But House Speaker Scott Saiki, the measure’s lead author and then-House majority leader, denied that was the motivation and said he was inspired by what he believed are conflicts of interest involving then-incoming President Donald Trump and his administration.

The measure stalled in a House committee last year.

The version of the bill that moved out of the Labor Committee on Thursday makes several changes that were recommended by the state Ethics Commission, said House Labor Chairman Aaron Johanson (D, Fort Shafter-Moanalua Gardens-Moanalua).

They include making it OK for the governor or mayor to own stock, mutual funds, real estate or rental income, and giving a newly elected governor or mayor a transition period of two months to divest themselves of their private business associations, Johanson said.

The bill places the same type of prohibition that is imposed on federal appointees when they are appointed by the president, “so there is precedent for this,” Johanson said.

State Ethics Commission Executive Director Daniel Gluck said his panel supports the intent of the bill as it relates to the governor, but has no position about applying it to the mayors since it has no jurisdiction over them.

The League of Women Voters of Hawaii submitted written testimony in support of the bill.

“A sitting governor or mayor’s first loyalty should be to the citizens of their jurisdiction,” wrote Piilani Kaopuiki of the organization’s legislative committee. “This bill removes a mechanism for temptation and opportunity for corruption of the two highest officials in state and city government.”

Neither Caldwell nor anyone from his campaign committee testified on the bill.

Lex Smith, chairman of Caldwell’s campaign committee, pointed out to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Thursday afternoon that he twice, prior to the mayoral campaigns of 2010 and 2012, asked former city Ethics Commission Executive Director Chuck Totto about the Territorial post, and Totto told him both times in writing that there were no ethical problems in maintaining it.

“It seems peculiar to us that they find a concern with the outside income of everybody except themselves,” Smith said. “We have to wonder what the point of the bill is if they are only concerned about the mayors’ outside income and the governor’s.”

In the weeks before the 2016 general election, mayoral challenger Charles Djou filed a complaint against Caldwell with the Honolulu Ethics Commission, alleging the mayor was misstating how much he was getting from Territorial. At issue was whether he should have reported unexercised stock options that were to be vested over six years.

Djou said Thursday that he received a one-page correspondence from the Ethics Commission last month telling him his complaint had been dismissed.

In July the Star-Advertiser reported that Caldwell sold 2,250 shares of Territorial Bancorp stock for about $72,000. He has since sold an additional 2,125 shares of Territorial at an undisclosed price, according to the annual financial disclosure statement he filed Jan. 30 with the city clerk’s office.

Caldwell’s Territorial pay was boosted from 2011 to 2017 by approximately $150,000 to $200,000 annually because of a one-time stock gift granted in 2010 that was to be paid out incrementally.

The Honolulu Salary Commission upped the pay for the mayor, City Council members and department heads effective July 1, 2017. Caldwell’s pay as mayor jumped to $173,184 annually from $164,928, a 5 percent raise.