Within a split-second of a Friday evening deadline about two weeks ago, state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole announced in a legislative conference room, “We have a bill. Gotta be the last one.”
Similar perhaps to the last baby being born on Oahu in a given year, Keohokalole figured that Senate Bill 1500 dealing with electric utility receivership was the last bill to make the cut for possible final
approval in this year’s legislative
session, given that voting to resolve House and Senate differences on the measure had been completed no more than a second or so before the 6:30 p.m. deadline April 25.
It wasn’t.
One other bill, House
Bill 960, related to state harbor improvements, was
recorded as meeting the “final decking” deadline on the same day even though
voting took
place between 6:30 p.m. and
6:31 p.m.
Three other bills, where hurried unanimous votes followed two to six minutes later, weren’t so lucky. These bills, including one to amp up a program to ticket speeding drivers using automated cameras, were deemed dead for the session, which ended May 2.
It’s not unusual for lawmakers to be dashing about, sometimes hectically, on this key procedural deadline under which
members of conference committees are tasked with resolving differences on many bills where a pending draft is not satisfactory to leaders in the House or Senate or both. If a new conference draft, or CD 1, can be agreed upon, then such bills are forwarded for final votes by all House and
Senate members in the
days ahead.
“Conference is a negotiation, and like any negotiation time is a tool,” said Colin Moore, who teaches public policy at the
University of Hawaii. “People get more likely to make a deal as the deadline draws near.”
This year, even after an original 6 p.m. deadline was extended by House Speaker Nadine Nakamura and Senate President Ron Kouchi, there was close clock watching as some lawmakers raced between Capitol conference rooms on different floors to take rushed votes to reach CD 1 agreements, which are often followed by a committee co-chair proclaiming, “We have a bill.”
On this year’s final decking day, Rep. Darius Kila and Sen. Chris Lee convened and reconvened conference committee meetings more than a half dozen times in an effort to reach agreements on 19 bills related to
transportation.
In some instances, tentative agreements on bill terms had been reached but still needed a go-ahead from leaders of House and Senate committees overseeing the budget to make sure any
appropriations or fiscal
impacts from bills were
acceptable.
At about 6:10 p.m., 20 minutes before the extended deadline, Kila and Lee were outside conference Room 225 huddling with House
Finance Committee Chair Rep. Kyle Yamashita.
Back in the conference room at 6:21 p.m., Lee got up from the table and said, “Sorry, I gotta go,” as he
hustled off to vote on another bill in a different room, promising to be back.
Precious time ticked off the clock.
“Two minutes,” someone in the room exclaimed, prompting Kila to declare, “Two-minute warning.”
Moments later, Rep. Chris Muraoka chimed in, “We got one minute.”
At 6:29 p.m., with Lee back in the room, Kila reconvened the meeting on the transportation bills to take up HB 960 related to harbor improvements. Kila began reading the agreed-upon material language for the CD 1 and a half minute or so after the deadline, Lee interrupted and said, “That sounds good. Take the vote right now.”
HB 960 was recorded as making the cut despite voting after the deadline based on legislative timekeeping.
After the vote, Kila asked Lee if there were any other bills on their list that could be put to a vote.
“Oh, sure,” Lee replied. “How much time we got?”
Kila proceeded to take up HB 697, the speeding-camera expansion legislation, and committee members voted 4-0 on the House side and 3-0 on the Senate side to approve a CD 1 at about
6:34 p.m. Kila later said he didn’t realize the deadline had slipped by. The bill was not allowed to advance.
House Speaker Nakamura said in a statement that in order for a bill to proceed out of a conference committee, it needs to be voted on prior to the deadline.
“Deadlines are necessary for the legislative process to ensure passage of timely legislation, prudent allocation of resources, and structured administration,” she said.
Still, some lawmakers scrambled several minutes after 6:30 p.m. in a fruitless effort to position bills for final votes before this year’s session adjourned.
“We have a bill,” declared Sen. Stanley Chang at about 6:35 p.m. in Room 225 after voting on SB 26, related to affordable housing. Two minutes later, Chang repeated the exercise for
SB 1229, also related to
affordable housing. Neither bill was deemed to have met the deadline.
Kouchi did not respond to a request to comment on the extended deadline and whether consideration was given to a second extension.
Because the Hawaii Legislature operates on a biennium schedule that begins in odd-numbered years, action on bills that did not emerge from conference committee this year can be picked up next year where it left off this year.
Some political observers have said that the clock
running out on bills during Hawaii’s 60-working-day session is one reason why a year-round session might make more sense.
“There’s always a rush at the end,” said retired University of Hawaii political science professor Neal Milner.
Two years ago, many bills got caught in a bottleneck on the same deadline day and died because there was an unusually high volume of bills awaiting final agreements without enough time in many cases for committee members to assemble for votes.
A special “cattle call” was arranged to alleviate the backup in 2023 by cramming all 76 lawmakers into one meeting room with 90 minutes to go before the deadline and having the chairs of different conference committees take turns holding rapid votes on bills.
The move helped add to what ended up being about 130 bills that received last-day conference drafts, or nearly half of all bills that were teed up for final votes and passage that year. Yet others died because time ran out.
This year, there was some murmuring at the Legislature for another cattle call as last-minute struggles became evident, but it did not happen.
