State legislators expect to take another run at legalizing adult recreational marijuana use and impose new, unspecified fees on tourists — all while figuring out how to pay for historic tax cuts passed earlier this year.
With just over a month before the Jan. 17 start of the next legislative session, several factors will dictate how much progress legislators will make, according to Colin Moore, who teaches public policy at the University of Hawaii and serves as associate professor at the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.
No one at the state Capitol, including Gov. Josh Green, faces election next year, which generally means it’s easier to take bold action, Moore said.
At the same time, voters elected a new class of first-time state senators and representatives — including a few more Republicans — who may need more than one legislative session to understand complicated issues such as the best way to assess a new tourism fee designed to offset visitor impacts on Hawaii’s environment and climate, Moore said.
The new class also includes some progressive House Democrats who may be supportive of lingering proposals such as legalizing recreational marijuana for adults, he said.
“And there’s a big unknown about what the Trump administration is going to do that could affect Hawaii,” Moore added.
House Democrats have a new majority leader, Speaker Nadine Nakamura, along with new House leadership, who may want to set their own, perhaps bold, agenda to begin the next session.
Nakamura, who represents communities in north Kauai, said in a statement to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the 2025 session “presents an opportunity to re-visit many critical issues facing our state. With eleven new House members, we anticipate fresh perspectives and bold ideas to come forward. Throughout the interim, we are actively connecting with our communities to gather valuable feedback, ensuring that our constituents’ needs remain our top priority.”
It remains to be seen how new legislative blood and new leadership of the 51-member House will affect the next legislative session.
New House Majority Leader Sean Quinlan, (D, Waialua-Haleiwa-Punaluu), said that “27 out of 51 members have two years or less of experience.” They include “a lot of new people, a lot of new personalities,” he said.
Some of the new members may help recreational marijuana use become legal after years of failed attempts.
For the first time in Hawaii history, the debate received a full vote on the House floor at the end of the last legislative session before it was voted down.
“That was historical in and of itself,” Quinlan said.
Asked about the odds that 2025 will be the year that Hawaii legalizes recreational marijuana, Quinlan said it’s “hard to say.”
Tweaking cannabis bills
The state Health Department last week announced that Green approved amendments to department rules including new language to allow for gummies and beverages to contain a low concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol derived from hemp.
THC is the active ingredient in marijuana.
State Rep. David Tarnas, who will return as chair of the House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee, has focused on tweaking details of several bills that failed to pass in the months since the last session ended, including drafting another version of a bill to legalize adult recreational marijuana use in response to concerns.
Tarnas (D, Hawi-Waimea-Waikoloa) has circulated his draft to House and Senate colleagues and the state Department of the Attorney General to get feedback before introducing a formal bill. He’s looked at other states that have legalized recreational marijuana, especially Maryland, to learn more about their experiences in order to respond to concerns likely to come up again.
Driving while impaired would still be illegal, and it would also be illegal to smoke marijuana in public, including on beaches.
And private entities such as hotels and resorts would still be able to ban smoking on their properties, including in hotel rooms, Tarnas said.
But Tarnas believes a new cottage industry of private, indoor locations could emerge to give tourists places to legally smoke indoors.
He also wants to eliminate any minimum level of THC in the bloodstream to determine impaired driving, saying there is “no scientific basis.”
Instead, Tarnas wants to use some of the tax revenue from marijuana sales to help increase training for county police officers to conduct field sobriety tests to determine if a driver is impaired before making an arrest.
Tarnas also wants to dedicate a share of marijuana tax revenue to law enforcement to crack down on money laundering and organized crime that may grow out of a legalized recreational marijuana industry.
He also wants to devote funding for “a public education campaign before sales begin to explain that we’ve got to keep this out of the hands of minors, and ‘Don’t drive while buzzed.’”
Additionally, there would be limits on where legal marijuana could be sold, such as near schools, Tarnas said.
One of the biggest challenges will be addressing safety and security concerns after Hawaii’s medical marijuana industry failed to realize windfalls of sales and tax revenue that have largely been blamed on the cost of regulation.
Tarnas and other proponents will have to balance quality control for consumers, keeping prices competitive with Hawaii’s marijuana black market and ensuring retail profits and tax revenue.
He called criticism of disappointing medical marijuana tax revenue “reasonable. With medical cannabis, we certainly have not met the expectations.”
At the same time, marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and with the incoming Trump administration, Tarnas said, “It’s really unpredictable what’s going to happen.”
‘Green fee’ challenges
Legislators also will again consider how to implement a so-called tourism impact fee or “green fee” that remains popular to help fund Hawaii’s response to climate change and environmental impacts. While the concept has broad support, there has been no consensus on how to implement a new fee and how much it should cost.
There has been no lack of ideas and challenges, including opposition from segments of Hawaii’s tourism industry.
The commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution limits Hawaii’s ability to impose different “interstate commerce” requirements on tourists from other states. And increasing the state’s hotel tax — known as the transient accommodations tax — also has faced opposition from tourism interests.
Quinlan said charging visitors arriving at Hawaii airports would not work because fees assessed at airports have to go directly into airport operations.
And an ala carte, pay-as-you-go model already being used at some popular state attractions such as Diamond Head State Monument would not generate the kind of volume and revenue that a broader fee on all visitors would.
When he was House Tourism Committee chair two sessions ago, Quinlan made 14 amendments to the House bill in response to concerns.
“We tried really hard to implement a green fee,” he said. “We ran into a lot of constitutional issues and we still aren’t quite there.”
Housing initiatives
Legislators also will have to figure out how to pay for tax cuts passed last session while funding the state’s share of a more than $4 billion settlement in the aftermath of the 2023 Lahaina wildfire and upcoming collective bargaining — all while “some unexpected cost have arisen,” Quinlan said.
The Maui settlement would resolve more than 650 lawsuits filed in state and federal courts, and the state’s share would be around $750 million.
Last session, legislators gave counties the power to regulate short-term vacation rentals, prompting Maui County to impose restrictions in order to generate more affordable housing to residents as landlords continue to raise rents in the aftermath of the fire.
So Quinlan expects legislators next session to work on the best way to pair state funds with new county powers to regulate vacation rentals with the goal of providing 50,000 more affordable homes across the state.
“Counties and the state need to work hand in hand,” he said. “There will be some major initiatives.”
A new House Democratic “rules group” has solicited ideas from House members about imposing internal, uniform requirements, including suggestions to make the release of written testimony the same ahead of every committee hearing and requiring committee chairs to publicly announce why they are deferring votes on bills, which essentially kills legislation for any session.
“We also have to tighten up” when a bill gets referred to a finance committee even if does not require state funding, “which gives the finance committee a reason not to approve it,” Tarnas said. “People are frustrated by that.”
But another suggestion to require a committee hearing on every bill would be unwieldy, according to Quinlan.
In general, about 3,000 bills are introduced each session. About half get at least one committee hearing, and 9% — or 250 to 300 — pass both the House and Senate and make their way to the governor, Quinlan said.
“If every bill were guaranteed to get a hearing,” he said, “you would hear some really awful ideas that are really intended to make a statement by the introducer.”
Quinlan remains optimistic that incoming and less experienced legislators working with veterans will help drive progress for the state in the upcoming session, including formalizing ideas that have been discussed for years.
“Sometimes popular ideas can get done in one session,” Quinlan said.
Marijuana? Medicinal pot is good enough for now. Count me out as far as its recreational use. Maui? Federal funding in excess of a billion dollars should get more or imploding. Housing? Forward full blast.