Lawmakers proposed dozens of measures on wildfire recovery and prevention when the session opened in January. By last week, that pool had dwindled to just a handful of bills.
One of those bills has drawn significant attention. Senate Bill 2922 would have allowed Hawaiian Electric to issue ratepayer-backed bonds — a process called securitization — to pay for wildfire mitigation efforts.
Proponents of the bill, like Gov. Josh Green and some utility analysts, say its passage is crucial to HECO's financial health. Others, including residents of Lahaina, say the bill would unfairly raise electric rates for customers.
SB2922 faltered just before the finish line last week when state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole announced that lawmakers would table the measure.
"At this point, it is premature to commit potentially decades of consumer payments toward the facilitation of a wildfire mitigation plan that does not yet exist," Keohokalole said.
But Green was unwilling to see the measure die such an unceremonious death. He wrote a letter to Keohokalole, urging that he and his fellow lawmakers reconsider passing the measure.
In a statement to HPR on Friday, the governor's office said they would continue to negotiate with Senate lawmakers over the weekend to see if they could come to a compromise on the bill.
Heading into the weekend, Keohokalole told HPR that he wasn't sure if the governor could offer any new arguments to change his mind. He said that in addition to the bill's many hearings, senators have had multiple venues to discuss SB2922, including a 3.5-hour informational briefing with HECO and KIUC.
"So it's unclear to me what other information might be available at this point to affect the decision," Keohokalole said.
As of Sunday, neither the spokesperson for the Senate nor the governor's office had any updates on the status of the bill. No additional hearings had been scheduled for the bill on Monday morning.
During conference, lawmakers look at every version of a bill that has passed through committee and decide which provisions to keep in the bill's final form. One particularly controversial provision in SB2922 would have allowed HECO to use securitization to pay for costs associated with the Lahaina wildfire.
Rep. Nicole Lowen was one of the co-chairs of the bill's conference committee. She expressed support for SB2922 during a previous House floor vote. But she told HPR that ultimately, HECO was asking for too much when it came to putting the costs of the Lahaina wildfire on the shoulders of ratepayers.
"HECO could have, and I think should have, come in and worked with legislators to pass a clean and simple securitization bill," Lowen said. "And instead they tried to get it to cover past liabilities, which I think would not have been a benefit for ratepayers and in the big picture, not the direction anyone wanted to go."
Henry Curtis, the executive director of the environmental and community action group Life of the Land, supports the use of securitized funds for grid hardening and wildfire mitigation efforts.
But he also felt that SB2922 was bogged down by "controversial" provisions, including one that allowed for utilities to submit wildfire mitigation plans to the Public Utilities Commission through a closed-door process.
"A scaled-down bill could have been very successful," Curtis said. "It was the addition of all these other provisions that really hindered any final bill from emerging."
Curtis also understood why lawmakers would be reticent to pass consequential legislation involving HECO while the utility's exact liability for the Lahaina fire is still an open question. The cause of the fire has yet to be determined, and two key investigations into the disaster are ongoing.
"Lawmakers in their short session sought to understand as much as they could about what's going on," said Curtis. "But there are so many pieces that are still missing."
In conference committee, Keohokalole added that lawmakers would work with the utilities in the coming months to refine the measure, suggesting that it could be re-introduced next session in 2025.
The governor could also call a special session in order to revive the measure before next January. A spokesperson for the governor's office said they were "committed to working until the end of session, or even after if needed, to find a solution that could provide stability to ratepayers." They did not specify any plans to call a special session.
Curtis appreciates that lawmakers need time to understand the complexity of the issue, but he worries that legislative deadlock will stall key fire prevention work.
"The thing that scares the heck out of Life of the Land is that while we're having all these discussions and debates, another Lahaina happens," Curtis said. "We're heading into the summer season, fires can erupt everywhere. And it's really critical that we move quickly in looking at minimizing any chance that another Lahaina would occur."
HPR's Maddie Bender contributed to this story.
