Counties submit wish list to Legislature

HILO — A larger county share of the tax on hotel and vacation rentals, liability protection for lifeguards, ambulances for Hawaii and Kauai counties and a greater say in union negotiations are the top priorities for county governments going into the 2017 session of the state Legislature.

Representatives of the four county councils, meeting as the Hawaii State Association of Counties, last month prioritized a package of 10 bills proposed by individual counties and agreed upon by each county council. HSAC leaders plan to meet with top state decision-makers just prior to the Jan. 18 start of the new legislative session.

Other bills in the package protect personal privacy from drones, weaken Sunshine Law provisions for county councils, provide money for counties to map important agricultural lands, allow people to identify their disabilities on their driver’s licenses and give counties a share of traffic fines in uncontested cases.

Hawaii County did not submit any bills for the package.

But the bills are nonetheless important, said Kona Councilman Dru Kanuha, Hawaii County’s HSAC representative.

“Three of the top four have big impacts on Hawaii County,” Kanuha said Tuesday.

Transient accommodations tax

Commonly known as the “hotel tax,” the transient accommodations tax, or TAT, is a 9.25 percent tax levied on accommodations of less than 180 days rented to people who have a permanent home elsewhere. The counties each get a share to help pay for the impacts tourists and part-time visitors have on local infrastructure.

As the second-largest revenue source for Hawaii County, TAT currently accounts for $19.2 million annually. Hawaii County estimates it pays more than $31 million annually for visitor impacts.

If the proposed measure passes, Hawaii County would get about $39 million of the roughly $475 million forecasters predict the tourist industry will bring in this year.

The counties’ share was capped at $93 million during the recession. The last two years, the counties split $103 million.

Increasing the counties’ share is a perennial request to the state Legislature. The counties don’t want to increase the tax, just their share of it.

The latest proposal asks the state to go back to a percentage collected, rather than have it capped at a fixed amount. The counties each would then get a percentage of what remains after the state and certain Oahu projects take theirs off the top.

The current breakdown is: 44.1 percent for Honolulu, 22.8 percent for Maui, 18.6 percent for Hawaii County and 14.5 percent for Kauai.

Lifeguard liability protection

For several years, the state Legislature extended the cutoff date on a measure giving county lifeguards and counties providing lifeguard services on state beaches protection from lawsuits. A proposed HSAC bill would make the protection permanent.

This limited liability protection is necessary because some counties would not otherwise provide lifeguard services at state beach parks, due to the fear of potential liability, proponents say.

New ambulances

This measure would authorize the purchase of an ambulance vehicle and the operational costs for one ambulance unit, including equipment, supplies and personnel costs for state-certified emergency medical services personnel, for a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, ambulance service for the counties of Kauai and Hawaii.

Union negotiations

County councils want more say in union negotiations, or at least a place at the table.

This measure would give each county council a nonvoting participant in negotiations with bargaining units if the relevant county has employees in the particular bargaining unit.

In addition, for bargaining units 11 and 12, firefighters and police, the governor’s four votes would be reduced to one, and each county mayor would continue to have one vote each.

Mayors would be required to update their respective county council on the progress of negotiations, under the measure.

“The councils are counted on to fund collective-bargaining agreements,” said former HSAC President Michael Victorino in a Sept. 4 statement. “It’s prudent for council members to know the status of labor negotiations so they can make sound budget decisions.”

Sunshine Law

As it has for several years running, the Maui County Council included two bills this session seeking amendments to the state Sunshine Law and open records act.

One bill would exempt county council members from public meetings laws in the case of community meetings, as long as the meeting wasn’t specifically organized for or directed to council members.

The Maui County Council, in voting unanimously for the measure, noted the proposal “is intended to make it easier for council members to engage with their constituents and learn about community issues important to them,” according to committee reports.

But the measure raises concerns for Common Cause Hawaii, which calls it an attempt “to essentially create an unlimited community meetings exemption.”

“In the spirit of openness in the Sunshine Law while providing county councils additional flexibility, the Legislature crafted special provisions that would allow county councils to attend community meetings,” said Corie Tanida, executive director. “We are unaware of attempts to use these provisions and absent any specific concerns or issues arising from existing law, it is difficult to understand the efforts to tinker with it, when the proposal does not afford the same protections as our current law does to the public.”

The second measure, to allow council members to exchange reports and data about topics coming up for vote outside a meeting as long as they don’t opine on it or commit to a vote, could make government more efficient, advocates say.

Tanida sees value in this, as long as the proposal includes “express and timely” public access to the documents.

The full text of the bills can be accessed from the HSAC website: https://hicounties.com/our-work/