Here’s what made the cut and what died after the state Legislature passed another major deadline this week.
Thursday marked the Legislature’s Second Crossover deadline, one of the last deadlines for a bill before it gets sent to the governor’s desk.
In March, bills were sent to the opposite chamber from where they originated: bills introduced in the Senate were sent to the House, and vice-versa. On Thursday, bills were sent back to their originating chamber, and lawmakers had the chance to disagree on any changes made to the bill during its time in the other chamber.
If any such disputes are made, lawmakers will need to hash out their disagreements at conference committees.
While hundreds of bills have successfully passed the crossover deadline, here are a few highlights among the survivors — and some of the ones that didn’t make it.
ICE, again
A host of bills that collectively limit the state’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement passed third reading, although most will be sent to conference committees.
Those surviving immigration bills include:
— House Bill 1768 and Senate Bill 2057, which prohibit law enforcement agencies from conducting immigration enforcement actions for ICE,
— HB 2540 and SB 3322, which prohibit law enforcement officers from inquiring about a person’s immigration status during a traffic stop (the House measure also prohibits the use of masks by officers in most circumstances), and
— HB 1839, which requires law enforcement agencies to inform people of their rights before any interview with federal immigration authorities and requires all records relating to those interviews to be preserved.
During House and Senate floor sessions on Tuesday, discussions of any measure were necessarily brief, given the large volume of bills on the agenda. However, SB 3322 generated some debate on the House floor, with Rep. Garner Shimizu (R-Fort Shafter) warning that the bill adds additional operational burdens onto local low enforcement agencies, increasing administrative costs while limiting cooperation between local and federal agencies.
Kohala Rep. David Tarnas countered that the bill instead provides clarity for what local law enforcement cannot do, allowing them to instead focus on their areas of responsibility.
Tax brackets
Gov. Josh Green’s mulligan on his previously announced tax cuts, SB 3125, passed the House despite opposition by the entire House Republican contingent.
The bill follows an announcement Green made at the start of the year that, in the face of a loss of federal funds, a series of tax cuts announced in 2024 — which would raise the standard tax deduction from $4,400 to $24,000 by the end of 2030 — will be suspended after this year. SB 3125, which implements that announcement, will face conference committees following disagreements raised by the House.
The current version of the bill does not include a long section slashing various tax credits in 2029 that was included in previous versions.
Rep. Diamond Garcia (R-‘Ewa) introduced on Tuesday a floor amendment to the measure that would have reverted the bill to a previous form that still retained some of the tax cuts for people with taxable incomes below $350,000. However, that amendment was defeated in a voice vote.
Artificial Intelligence
A measure requiring AI operators to establish procedures in their AI models to respond to suicidal ideation among users passed the House unanimously, although the Senate also registered disagreements with amendments made.
SB 3001 is an attempt to limit growing reports of “AI psychosis,” wherein users of AI chatbots and other AI services develop fixations and delusional beliefs centered around the AI. In some cases, users reportedly confided to the AI that they intended to kill themselves, which the AI then seemingly encouraged.
The bill requires AI developers to implement measures where the service can identify and respond appropriately to suicidal ideation in users, to notify users that it is not a human, to remind users at regular intervals to take a break from the chat and to prevent the service from producing sexually explicit content.
Noise cameras
The Senate voted to pass HB 1588, a measure that would fund a program in the state Department of Transportation to install instruments — called “noise detection traffic cameras” in the bill — in order to identify areas of excessive traffic noise.
The bill does not go into specifics about how that program would work: the DOT, the Department of Health and the counties would collaborate to develop the actual policies themselves, and the total amount of funding for the program is still undetermined.
But the measure still drew some opposition on the Senate floor Tuesday, with Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole (D-Kāne‘ohe) warning that the bill “builds monitoring infrastructure that could eventually be expanded and repurposed.”
“Who here believes that data that’s captured by the government and eventually potentially fed into AI will ever be erased and will never be co-opted in some other form for some other purpose?” Keohokalole asked. “This risk is not theoretical … This program lowers the bar for the collection of statewide surveillance data of citizens.”
Nonetheless, the bill passed with only five senators voting against it, although the House subsequently announced disagreements with Senate amendments to the bill, which will send it to conference committees.
Dead measures
The Senate failed to pass HB 2413 on Tuesday. The bill was one that would require people charged and held for certain non-violent offenses to be released at the defendant’s arraignment, as an effort to reduce the number of pre-trial defendants in Hawai‘i jails.
Sen. Kurt Fevella (R-‘Ewa Beach) spoke in opposition of the bill, warning that people charged with property damage, custodial interference and unlawful imprisonment would be released under the bill. Sixteen senators voted against the bill.
Meanwhile, other measures Aloha State Daily has reported on through the Legislative session have died along the way, including:
— HB 2593, extending Mauna Kea observatory leases for up to 10 more years (Read more here),
— HB 1636, allowing the counties to impound rogue shopping carts and release them at the store’s expense (Read more here and here),
— HB 1611, enacting incremental reductions in the general excise tax on groceries and nonprescription drugs (Read more here),
— HB 2570, establishing licensing requirements for sports betting operators (Read more here),
— HB 2198, including predictive markets into the state definition of gambling,
— HB 1911, adjusting the existing categories of alcohol for liquor tax purposes (Read more here).
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