Finance Committee passes HB 300 with amendments, shifts $200 million to reserve and makes multiple budget/CIP adjustments

The House Committee on Finance voted to pass House Bill 300, the governor’s executive biennium budget, with a set of committee amendments and adjustments the chair described as a house draft. Committee members and a large set of state agencies, nonprofit service providers and other stakeholders provided testimony during the hearing; the committee then recessed to consider decisions and ultimately returned to adopt the committee package.

Why it matters: HB 300 is the state’s operational budget for the coming biennium. The committee's adopted adjustments reallocate and reprioritize funds across dozens of departments and programs and set the House’s negotiating posture for any conference with the Senate.

Major actions and committee priorities announced during decision making included placing $200,000,000 into an emergency budget and reserve fund as a contingency given uncertainty in federal funding, and a broad set of agency-level modifications described by the chair as either technical, funding-floor changes or “house adjustments.” The chair repeatedly noted uncertainty tied to federal actions and the January core revenue baseline used to prepare the executive budget.

Testimony highlights and affected agencies: Dozens of agencies testified in favor of the executive budget during the hearing, including a senior adviser to the governor (Will Cain), Luis Oliverio (Director of the Department of Budget and Finance), the Department of Education (Keith Hayashi), DBEDT (Jimmy Tokioka), the Department of Transportation (Ed Snippett), the Department of Health, the Department of Human Services and many others. Nonprofit and community organizations also testified on individual priorities, including requests to retain or add funding for reproductive and family planning services, supportive housing and alternatives to incarceration.

Notable public testimony included: a request from a coalition opposing proposed planning funds for a new jail replacement and other expansion provisions, urging that planning dollars instead be allocated to permanent supportive housing and community-based mental-health services; advocacy by Essential Access Health for the governor’s $3,000,000 family planning line item; and testimony from the Hawaii Correctional Systems Oversight Commission seeking two additional positions to support oversight work.

Committee discussion and selected adjustments: Committee members and presenting department staff discussed vulnerability of certain departments to potential federal funding reductions, and DBEDT testified about economic-development priorities (tourism marketing for West Maui, film and creative-industry efforts and small-business support through HTDC). The committee's line-by-line adjustments included a large number of agency-specific modifications across AGR, AGS, ATG, DBEDT, B&F, DOT, DOE, HMS (Health and Human Services), HRD, DOI and the University of Hawaii; many items were marked "House does not concur" when the committee retained existing proposals or moved them between agencies for administration or CIP placement.

The chair read a long list of changes the committee recommended to the governor’s executive biennium budget. As the chair emphasized, the house draft is a working document that will be subject to conference with the Senate and to revised revenue forecasts from the Council on Revenues.

Committee decision: After a short recess for members to digest the adjustments, the committee reconvened and adopted the recommendation to pass HB 300 with amendments. The chair noted that the budget currently relies on the January core revenue baseline and said the house intentionally put money into reserve given revenue uncertainty. The committee recorded no recorded objections at the time it adopted the recommendation, and it noted excused absences for specified members during the decision.

Next steps: HB 300, as amended by the committee, will proceed in the House process with the committee’s adjustments recorded and will enter any required conference negotiations with the Senate. The committee chair and members said they expect to monitor Council on Revenues updates and federal developments that could affect the final fiscal picture.