Gov. Josh Green on Monday made good on his pledge to help the people of Maui recover from the Aug. 8 wildfires while sticking to his earlier promises to help financially struggling families across the state through tax breaks, creating more housing and easing homelessness in the first budget proposal of his year-old administration.

Green’s so-called supplemental budget was delivered to legislators ahead of the upcoming legislative session, which is scheduled to begin Jan. 17.

Ever since the devastating wildfires, lawmakers have expected their next session to be dominated by bills and money to help Maui’s recovery.

“Recovery efforts for the 2023 wildfires are our highest priority as the health and welfare of Maui’s people must be at the forefront as they heal from the devastation,” according to the budget request. “This will require a great deal of the state’s resources, for which we have set-aside half a billion dollars for the state’s share of the costs.”

Green’s budget also seeks to reduce the risk of future wildfire disasters through 20 additional staff for the state’s Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, firefighting equipment, $16 million for helicopters to fly patients from rural communities, new roads statewide for escape routes and a new position of fire marshal.

But Green also wants more money for public school security and to feed students and increase the number of health care workers by paying off student loans, especially for mental health specialists who are needed even more to help fire survivors.

“For a long time we’ve come up short in delivering mental health care,” Green said. “We are a human services administration.”

Paying off debt for health care workers with Hawaii ties would help increase staffing in rural communities and the neighbor islands.

The program has begun accepting applications, and Green — who started his Hawaii medical career in Kau on Hawaii island — called the plan “a game-changer.”

Green also wants tourists to pay to help the islands respond to climate change and its impact on the environment, perhaps by increasing the hotel room tax.

“A lot of your appropriations are going to be environmental,” he said.

Increasing costs on tourists also will likely reduce the number of visitors, who set a new record of over 10 million just before COVID-19 all but shut down tourism starting in March 2020.

“It would curb the number of total travelers,” Green said.

He said he has “heard loud and clear” from residents who don’t want to see a return of 10 million visitors.

He said he’s open to a climate fee “from any source” but “mostly visitors.”

The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism has forecast 9.6 million visitor arrivals for 2023.

Green wants owners of short-term vacation rentals on Maui to convert to long-term rentals for fire survivors, and the Maui County Council has approved eliminating their property taxes for up to 18 months.

Green previously proposed that tourists help pay for their impacts on the climate and environment through the hotel transient accommodations tax but said Monday that some sort of short-term rental payment also could be used because he likes the idea of higher property taxes on owners who refuse to commit to long-term rentals.

He hopes to convince owners of at least 3,000 short-term rentals on Maui to accommodate the 3,000 families still living in hotels more than four months after the fires.

Green would like to see short-term rental owners pay higher property taxes to offset the elimination of property taxes for those who convert to long-term rentals for fire survivors.

At the same time, Green sees providing financial incentives as the quickest way to both house Maui fire survivors and backfill the shortage of 50,000 homes across the islands.

Newer homes that were built with fire prevention in mind survived better on Maui, and Green’s budget proposal calls for $20 million for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to build fire-resistant homes on DHHL land.

He calls the price of homes the biggest impediment to making life affordable in Hawaii while 42% of residents have jobs but cannot afford basics such as housing, child care and food.

Green’s budget would provide $38 million in tax credits for families with dependent children and adults.

He also wants to cut Hawaii’s more than 8,000 homeless population in half in four years.

To help pay for his plan, Green has converted building projects to be paid for through general obligation bonds rather than cash, and imposed a 5% “hard” budget cut on state departments, along with a 5% cut on discretionary spending.

His budget leaves the state’s $1.5 billion rainy day fund intact and leaves $827 million in reserve for 2024 and more than $750 million for 2025.

The reserves and rainy day fund mean Hawaii will continue to enjoy favorable bond ratings and have money to prepare for the next disaster.

Citing the ongoing threats of wildfires, tsunamis, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, Green said, “It’s difficult to predict what could come next.”