For a third consecutive year, state lawmakers have chosen to not pass a fee that would be charged mainly to tourists to better manage and protect Hawaii’s fragile environment, which remains under heavy strain from constant foot and vehicular traffic and under siege by invasive species. 

The proposed fee also aimed to help the remote island state cope with the growing threats of climate change.

This year, two measures that would create such a climate-impact fee, or “green” fee, passed the House but died in the Senate. After crossing over earlier this month, they failed to get a hearing scheduled by the deadline last week even though Gov. Josh Green declared the fee a top priority. 

Senate leaders’ rejection of a visitor fee to better manage the state’s natural resources follows the Aug. 8 Lahaina wildfire, which killed at least 101 people and was fueled by the invasive grasses that have overtaken the dry slopes above that West Maui town.

“I’ve heard some people saying around the Capitol, ‘If we can’t fund some of these efforts after everything that’s happened on Maui, wow, what would it take?’” Melissa Pavlicek, a lobbyist and green-fee supporter, said during a virtual meeting with fellow supporters last week. 

“But I know there’s so many more things going on than that, obviously” as lawmakers balance competing needs, she added.

The two House measures that stalled in the Senate proposed to create the climate impact fee either by increasing the state tax charged on hotel rooms and short stays by 1 percentage point, raising it to 10.25%, or by adding a flat $25 fee.

That would be in addition to the 3% transient accommodations tax that each of Hawaii’s counties can now charge as well.

Local visitor industry leaders and operators, such as Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association CEO Mufi Hannemann, have opposed the most recent TAT increase proposal, saying the added expense would cause too many visitors to fly elsewhere. 

However, some green fee supporters and state legislators, such as Rep. Sean Quinlan, said that increasing the TAT is the simplest way to raise those funds and the best way for the visitor-targeted fee to withstand any court challenges. 

Quinlan worked on legislative efforts last year to devise a green fee that didn’t rely on a TAT increase. He said that effort grew enormously complicated and amassed more amendments than any other bill he’s worked on while in office.

He criticized the local hotel operators’ concerns about pricing out visitors when, he said, they’ve dramatically increased their own hotel room prices in recent years.

“I’m not the one who doubled hotel rates in the last five years,” Quinlan said Tuesday. “That was their decision.”

Now, the bill most similar to a green fee proposal that’s still alive this session is one that Quinlan introduced — House Bill 2563.

It would require the Hawaii Tourism Authority to create a mobile app that could be used to charge tourists fees at popular beaches and trails, mainly at those places’ parking sites. It aims to boost revenues for underfunded state and county park agencies while also freeing up space for locals to better enjoy popular outdoor destinations, he said.

The dollars raised by the app could only be spent at the sites where they were collected, and the program would raise only a fraction of what’s needed to better protect Hawaii’s natural resources, Quinlan said. 

The measure needs to have a hearing scheduled before the end of next week by the Senate Ways and Means Committee in order to advance.

Closing The Gap

Less than 1% of Hawaii’s total state budget goes toward protecting its natural resources, according to the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

A study five years ago by the nonprofit Conservation International found that Hawaii has an annual spending gap of some $358 million to sufficiently manage its natural environment. 

“We need to be closing that gap even in years where the state faces budget challenges,” Carissa Cabrerra, a member of the local advocacy coalition Care for Aina Now, said in the group’s virtual briefing last week.

During the briefing, Rep. Linda Ichiyama, who chairs the House Water and Land Committee, said there should be a “real heart-to-heart conversation” with the tourism industry before the next legislative session on why the TAT increase is needed.

She said those talks could resemble recent conversations to convince marine tourism operators to support a new ocean stewardship fee of $1 per visitor.

In those talks, Ichiyama said, the state’s Division of Aquatic Resources laid out how it would use the funding to better protect Hawaii’s nearshore environment to continue to attract snorkelers and other visitors.

In the previous two legislative sessions, climate-impact fee measures managed to pass both chambers but then died behind closed doors during the pivotal conference committee meetings in late April. 

In an email Monday, Green’s office said it was disappointed the Senate opted not to advance the fee proposal this year even though the governor had pushed for it in his January State of the State address and made it a top priority.

“Senate committee chairs appear to be hesitant about creating another fee, especially if it’s collected at the accommodations,” Green’s office said in a statement.

Sen. Donavan Dela Cruz, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday on why this year’s fee measures failed to get hearings in that chamber.

His committee would have been one of those next in line to hear the bills based on their referrals, but they never cleared their first hurdle before environment and water and land committees, whose chairs chose to not hear the measures.

Care for Aina Now spokesperson Nahelani Parsons said Tuesday that the group is now focused this session on boosting the state’s natural resource spending through other means, namely the state budget process.

The coalition of some 48 organizations was previously called the Green Fee Coalition but it recently rebranded to advocate for various ways to close the multimillion-dollar gap in Hawaii’s climate and environment spending.

Parsons said the group is now pushing for Senate Bill 3068’s passage to make Hawaii more resilient to wildfires.

David Smith, state Division of Forestry and Wildlife administrator, told Care for Aina Now members during their briefing that his agency is overstretched and underfunded as it manages about 1 million acres of forest reserves, wildlife sanctuaries, public hunting areas and other natural resources across the entire island archipelago on less than one-half of 1% of the state budget.

“We’re surviving off the crumbs that fall off the table,” Smith said. “But you know, we’re competing with a lot of other worthy causes and there’s only so much money to go around.”

DOFAW benefited from an approximately $18 million boost to its budget this year from state legislators, he said. The added funds will immediately go to good use, but the agency could also benefit from a recurring source of revenue devoted to Hawaii’s natural resource protection, he said.

“We could easily use that much money every year,” Smith said. “There’s just no question.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by The Healy Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.