Hawaii lawmakers are looking to expand the governor’s powers to assume control over any state facility during an emergency and not have to worry about paying rent to the agency that controls it. Members of the House of Representatives say the proposed legislation is in response to millions that the state has paid to the Hawai‘i Convention Center to host a call center for unemployment insurance claims, as well as frustrating negotiations over setting up coronavirus vaccination sites.

House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke said the high costs have thwarted the labor department’s ability to hire more staff to handle unemployment claims even as the center remains woefully overtaxed.

Leaders in the House stepped in last year to help set up the emergency center for jobless claims at the convention center as the unemployment rate soared to 23.8% in April and the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations was quickly overwhelmed. About half of the state’s working population filed unemployment claims last year.

The Hawai‘i Convention Center, which is overseen by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, charged the labor department $1 million to rent a ballroom and several meeting rooms between mid-April and the end of December, and another $1.67 million in “event fees.” The costs equate to about $314,000 a month. The state has extended the contract through the end of June, and if those costs remain the same, the labor department will have paid out a total of $4.5 million.

By comparison, the Hawai‘i Convention Center brought in a total of $5.57 million in rental and events income in 2019, the year before the pandemic hit.

The convention center charged the labor department another $575,000 for food and beverage service from April through August, according to Marisa Yamane, a spokeswoman for the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Yamane said the labor department is being charged a reduced rate that covers only the costs of basic operations. She said the tourism authority wasn’t in a position to allow the labor department to work out of the convention center for free since Gov. David Ige has suspended its share of the transient accommodations tax.

But the fact that the state would need to pay another state agency anything during an emergency has angered lawmakers.

“Rather than wasting precious time while a pandemic is raging, the governor shouldn’t have to be so consumed with whether or not to pay to use a school, whether or not we are going to pay a convention center,” said Rep. Aaron Johanson (D, Fort Shafter-Moanalua Gardens-Aliamanu) during a Friday floor session. Johanson, who introduced the legislation, called the negotiations over space for emergency operations “long, painful and arduous.”

House leaders more recently helped set up mass vaccination sites for the coronavirus at Pier 2 and the Blaisdell Center in Honolulu.

Rep. Adrian Tam (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana) said that many of his constituents had wanted a vaccination site at the Hawai‘i Convention Center as well, but it was too expensive.

“I just don’t think that the state should be charging the state rent for a state service,” he said.

Meanwhile, the number of call agents and adjudicators who can resolve glitches in unemployment claims remains inadequate. Residents have reported waiting months to have claims resolved while rent and bills pile up. Getting through to a call center agent can be daunting. Some residents say they have called hundreds of times in a single day and can’t get through.

DLIR Director Anne Perreira-Eustaquio said the department has been allocated enough money to hire 170 temporary staff. As of Friday the department had 70 call center agents and 44 adjudicators.

Perreira-Eustaquio said that beyond the 170 positions, the department didn’t have funds to hire any more staff.

Asked whether this was because of the costs of renting the Hawai‘i Convention Center, she would only say that “funds are extremely tight.”

But Perreira-Eustaquio also said it was hard to train and bring on so many new staffers.

The call center at the convention center had largely been staffed by volunteers, including teachers and other government workers, before the labor department outsourced much of the work to a company called Maxiums. The contract is coming to a close, and the labor department began hiring local workers at the end of last year to replace them.