County council approves 2020 HSAC legislative package, backing housing, TAT changes and cesspool incentives

The Hawaii County Council voted Dec. 4 to approve the Hawaii State Association of Counties’ 2020 legislative package, a set of eight proposals the county will transmit as part of HSAC’s state-level agenda.

Council member Ashley Kirkowitz (chair of the HSAC-related discussion) said the package narrowed a larger list to eight measures the executive committee could uniformly support. Two of the measures originate from Hawaii County: one would make the 201H affordable-housing streamlined process concurrent with district boundary rules (statute 205) for projects 15 acres or smaller, removing an extra Land Use Commission review hurdle; the other would reallocate 3.5% of statewide transient-accommodations tax (TAT) collections among counties to increase local parks-and-rec maintenance funding.

Council member Tim Richards described the TAT change as modest but targeted: using the current county-distribution formula to allocate an additional 3.5% statewide would yield roughly an extra $3 million for Hawaii County parks and an estimated $20 million statewide dedicated to parks maintenance.

Other bills in the package include giving counties explicit authority to regulate tobacco products (including flavored vaping products), vehicle-registration measures to help fund highway-beautification and abandoned-vehicle programs, a proposal to exempt lifeguards from certain civil liabilities, lowering legal blood-alcohol thresholds from 0.08 to 0.05 (a measure supported statewide by law enforcement groups), and two Maui-origin measures proposing tax-credit incentives and relaxed limits to encourage cesspool conversions.

Kirkowitz moved adoption of the package as transmitted in Communication 636. The motion was seconded and carried by voice vote; the council also voted to close the file on the communication. Several council members asked staff to coordinate with HSAC members and to refine the county’s two proposed measures ahead of legislative sessions.

The package will now be transmitted via HSAC to state legislators; members who had concerns were encouraged to participate in HSAC meetings and to raise objections through that forum.