The four county mayors, Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm and representatives from the Honolulu Police Department joined forces Wednesday to urge Gov. David Ige to veto a bill that would eliminate cash bail for some nonviolent, low-level offenses.

“This is like taking a bazooka to a problem of a fly instead of a flyswatter. The collateral damage that this bill could cause is humongous,” said Hawaii island Mayor Mitch Roth at Wednesday’s news conference in Honolulu. “When you start to erode the criminal justice system, when you start to erode the confidence in our courts, you start to see people acting differently. And this bill does not help us. It just hurts us.”

Supporters of the measure counter that it helps bring equity to the pretrial system for those from a lower economic background.

House Bill 1567 applies to defendants who are arrested for a traffic offense, violation, nonviolent petty misdemeanor offense, nonviolent misdemeanor offense, or nonviolent Class C felony. It allows them to await their court date on their own recognizance without paying cash bail.

The measure exempts defendants for a variety of reasons such as if the offense involves assault, violation of a restraining order, possessing a dangerous drug or habitual property crime.

Among those who also would not qualify for no-cash bail are defendants who present a risk of danger to another person or a risk of re-offending; have a history of nonappearance before a court within the past two years; have a prior conviction of violent crime within the past eight years; have a pending trial or sentencing at the time of the arrest; or are being concurrently changed with a violent crime or any felony.

Kat Brady, coordinator at Community Alliance on Prisons, said the opponents to the measure were mischaracterizing the bill.

“I just find these kinds of statements coming from elected officials, people who are supposedly leaders, I find them really disturbing,” she said. “With all the exceptions, not many people are going to get out. So it is a small number of people and the thing they never ever talk about is all the people who have money who get released after they’ve committed big crimes.”

In addition to Alm and Roth, Wednesday’s news conference at the Mission Memorial Auditorium was attended by Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi and Maui County Mayor Michael Victorino. Kauai County Mayor Derek Kawakami provided a recorded message.

None of the government officials provided statistics on how many defendants HB 1567 would affect.

But Alm said public defenders can already request that judges reduce bail for their clients or have them released into supervisory custody under a family member.

“The problem in many cases is the folks they’re talking about, they burn every bridge with their family … So they’re not willing to supervise them,” he said. “If the judge rules against (prosecutors), that’s the way it works. We just want to have that opportunity.”

Alm acknowledged the need for pretrial reforms and said one solution would be to invest more in the judiciary to have more judges available to evaluate each case quickly.

He added that overcrowding at Oahu Community Correctional Center was not a reason to implement a measure like HB 1567.

“I think they’re things that we can all look at and come up with a new system. But it’s got to be one where we have input from the police, you have input from the courts, from the legislators, from the City Council and try to come up with a real holistic approach,” Alm said. “Because this is an issue that’s not going away.”

Rep. Scot Matayoshi, who introduced the measure at the state Legislature, has reversed course and asked Ige to veto the bill because of the concerns that have been raised by opponents.

“Some of the crimes that the opposition cherry-­picked were possibly not covered under the bill,” he said. “Now, I think it was still falling under the broad judicial discretion portion. But they may have slipped through the specifically laid-out exemptions portion.

“I don’t want us to pass bad law. So if this had come up during the committee hearings, we could have dealt with it,” he added. “It’s obviously too late now … So I think the right thing to do at this point is for the governor to veto the bill, which is what I requested. And for us to go back and see if something can work in the future.”

Blangiardi said that the bill was not on his administration’s radar as they did not think that it would pass.

Matayoshi added that all the crimes that the opposition are concerned about are already eligible for bail, meaning that if people have enough funds they can still be released.

“What we’re doing right now in our current system, is that if two people commit the exact same crime with the exact same circumstances, but one has money and one doesn’t, the one with money bails out, the one without money goes to jail,” he said. “That, to me, was the inequity that this bill was trying to solve. So people are angry because they think that this bill is going to get to people who are just going to be left free, but that is the current status quo, if you have enough money, is that you will be able to bail out.”

Ige’s office said he had no comment on the measure, which he is still considering. He has until June 27 to inform the Legislature if he intends to veto it.