At this point, the Office of the Legislative Analyst has existed for over one-quarter of a century.
However, we’re not celebrating any anniversaries. That’s because it’s never been established.
“The law is older than many of the legislative aides at the Legislature (as well as a few legislators),” wrote Tom Yamachika in August 2024. “That is a long time for a law that does nothing to be taking up space in our statute books!”
His comments were inspired by another piece authored by a joint article authored by Jonathan Helton of the Grassroots Institute of Hawai‘i and Nicole Woo of the Hawaii Children’s Action Network.
Calls for the Office’s establishment emerge like a politically consistent hum of white noise every few years.
It starts in 1989, when the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) conducts a thorough review of Hawai‘i’s budgetary capacity and finds that the legislative tools available for objective fiscal analysis are sorely lacking.
In the following year, the Legislature advances a bill to the Governor’s office. Governor John Waihe‘e signs Senate Bill 2338 into law on July 9, 1990. It creates the Office of the Legislative Analyst to be administered by a joint committee of House and Senate leadership.
“Modern legislatures have become sophisticated data gatherers and analysts, on par with the executive and judiciary branches,” Act 347 finds. “Over the last five years, this shift has been accelerated through the development of professional, highly specialized legislative staff.”
It looks like everything is set, except it seemingly stalls. The law is there. The mandate is clear. But the physical office never takes shape.
It exists on paper in Hawai‘i Revised Statutes, although no money is thereafter ever appropriated to fund it. At least one serious effort (House Bill 3715) in the 1996 Legislative Session was made to fund the office with $350,000. It stalls.
As Hawai‘i’s economy contracts and the size of government shrinks in the late nineties, Governor Benjamin Cayetano’s Role of Government Working Group once again calls for the office’s establishment. Despite this recommendation, no actions result.
A February 2001 report by the State Auditor calls for the Legislature to “expand its own technical capabilities to review and assess state fiscal data, as was intended by the creation of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee and the Office of the Legislative Analyst.”
Once again, the office is neither established nor funded. The years compound into decades and the hum is persistent, although its force rises and falls.
That’s where the hum has grown a little louder in the last two years.
Settling on a Future
Several efforts have been made in the last two years to reform the office.
One approach has involved members of the small Republican Caucus in the House, combined with smatterings of Democratic support from good government advocates, have largely led these charges.
So far, they haven’t gone very far.
In the 2026 Legislative Session, House Bill 2183 proposed an overhaul of the office’s functions. introduced by Rep. Julie Reyes Oda, a Republican from ‘Ewa Beach.
Another measure was House Bill 2128, which would have required the Office of the Legislative Analyst to produce fiscal notes (short descriptions of the fiscal cost of every measure). As was the case with its Senate companion, Senate Bill 2828, it failed to even get a hearing. A similar measure in the House, House Bill 2364, also failed to get a hearing.
The second approach is more systemic and has often involved more seasoned Democrats.
In the 2025 legislative session, Senator Lorraine Inouye introduced Senate Bill 1081, which proposed scrapping the Office of the Legislative Analyst in favor of a Legislative Budget Office. The measure only received one hearing in the Senate before failing to get a joint hearing before the Committee on Judiciary and the Committee on Ways and Means.
Two other efforts were launched by then-Finance Chair Kyle Yamshita, who harbors long-term, if not visionary, plans for the state’s fiscal future.
Another unsuccessful measure authored by Then-House Finance Chair Kyle Yamashita (would have re-organized the Office of the Legislative Analyst to make it more difficult to remove the Chief Legislative Analyst from office.
Yamashita also secured the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 61, which called on the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) to assess how the Legislature could issue fiscal notes.
In January 2026, the LRB published an exhaustive report that lays out the best traits of fiscal notes, which largely appear to be utilized in every other Legislature except Hawai‘i’s.
The LRB report has tossed the ball back in the Legislature’s court. “Because there are so many variables in how fiscal notes may be administered, the Bureau recommends forming a legislative task force, working group, or joint legislative committee to weigh the considerations and costs discussed in this report.”
Wranglings over the state budget only serve as a reminder that an impartial office charged with providing cold, hard data is critical and justified.
“Estimates generally focus on the direct costs to the state, but there is a growing interest to incorporate the potential impacts a bill may have on the broader economy,” one March 2026 report from the National Council of State Legislatures explains. “Though often complicated and controversial, fiscal notes are a tool that helps the legislature make intelligent, informed decisions based on the best information available.”
Lawmakers were not inclined, at least seriously, to engage with the LRB’s study. That’s unfortunate, as it provides a serious blueprint for the Legislature to chart the future of fiscal notes, along with the Office of the Legislative Analyst.
If the office is redundant, and the Legislature never plans to establish the Office of the Legislative Analyst, then it should be repealed. No bill, at least recent, has taken so forceful an action. Nothing is set in stone.
For now, the Office of the Legislative Analyst sits in law without any force.
Perry Arrasmith can be reached at hello@perryarrasmith.com.
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