David Shapiro: Hawaii will pay cost of tourism vacuum left by Legislature

The Legislature’s bill to gut the Hawaii Tourism Authority and reallocate hotel room tax revenues, passed over Gov. David Ige’s veto, has the whiff of a money grab passed off as tourism reform.

The measure would strip HTA’s $79 million in dedicated annual funding from the hotel tax and scoop the money into the state’s general fund, leaving HTA to operate this year on $60 million in federal COVID relief funds that won’t renew.

In addition, lawmakers diverted the counties’ $103 million share of the hotel tax to the state general fund and authorized the four counties to each levy their own 3% hotel tax to make up lost revenue.

The hotel tax was conceived to pay for tourism promotion and management, and cover the state and counties for tourism-related infrastructure and service costs. Now legislators will be free to spend it as they wish to please special interests that elect them.

It magnifies the chaos surrounding Hawaii tourism as visitors return at near-2019 levels to the surprise of local officials and residents. Workers and rental cars are scarce, restaurants and attractions under pandemic restrictions lack capacity to serve the surge of visitors, and beleaguered Maui Mayor Mike Victorino pleads for a “pause” that isn’t likely to happen.

Residents are rightly frustrated that after a year of big talk from politicians about reshaping tourism to bring in fewer visitors who spend more and are more sensitive to local resources, little has been done to achieve this.

And with HTA now cash-strapped and more consumed with its own future than implementing its visitor management plan, nobody in state government is positioned to coordinate a tourism transformation, leaving each county to fend for itself.

Lawmakers have eyed a raid on hotel tax revenue for years, and their claims that the 3% county increases will in themselves bring about a shift to fewer and wealthier tourists is nonsense.

In the vacuum the Legislature has left, decisions about what tourists come will be made almost entirely by the airlines, hotels and vacation rentals that bring them in.

Now and for the foreseeable future, their market sweet spot is ballooning numbers of budget-conscious visitors who are looking for an affordable good time and are least likely to be conscious of community sensibilities.

The greatest outrage is that this legislation, which seemed motivated as much by lawmaker animosity to HTA leadership as policy goals, was a gut-and-replace bill hastily cobbled in secret at the end of session without public hearings, proper research or consideration of unintended consequences.

We’ll continue getting legislative malpractice of this magnitude until voters make clear to ringleaders — House Speaker Scott Saiki and Senate President Ron Kouchi; House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke and Senate Ways and Means Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz; and the tourism chairmen, Rep. Richard Onishi and Sen. Glenn Wakai — that we’ve had enough of corrupt rules that allow these shady last-minute Frankenbills.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.