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Votes at a glance: multiple bills advanced in joint Senate committee hearings Feb. 7
Summary
On Feb. 7, several housing, historic-preservation, and land-use bills were acted on by joint Senate committees; most were passed with committee amendments, some were deferred. This roundup lists each bill, the committees that acted, the committee outcome, and key technical notes from testimony.
Senate committees meeting jointly on Feb. 7 took final committee action on multiple bills covering housing, historic-preservation review, transit-oriented development and burial-site work. Below are the committee actions recorded in the hearing and the key technical or legal points the committees asked staff to include in committee reports.
Nut graf: The committees generally approved chair recommendations to pass several measures with amendments that incorporated agency technical fixes (Attorney General, DLNR, Department of Health, DPP) or limited scopes (disaster recovery language for Maui housing bills); a few measures were deferred for later consideration.
Summary of committee actions (by bill):
- SB 443 (agricultural lands / solar energy): Passed with amendments. Committees replaced an explicit BLNR certification requirement with a permit-condition approach and directed staff to reference HRS §165-2; agencies recommended shifting verification roles to the Department of Agriculture. (Committees on Water and Land; Energy and Intergovernmental Affairs.)
- SB 789 / SB 13-27 (historic-preservation reviews for housing projects): Passed with amendments where the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ suggested edits were adopted and a redundant subsection (page 4, section f) was struck at the request of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands; SB 13-27 was deferred where it duplicated language heard earlier. (Committees on Water and Land; Housing; Hawaiian Affairs.)
- SB 26 (affordable housing land inventory task force): Passed with amendments. Committees adopted an amendment to include transit-oriented-development (TOD) inventories, add legislative leaders and county representatives to the task force, and insert an appropriation from the Rental Housing Revolving Fund to support the Mayor Wright Homes project. (Committees on Housing; Water and Land.)
- SB 867 (water resources working group / affordable housing): Passed with amendments (Department of Health technical suggestion accepted to designate the Director of Health where appropriate). (Committees on Housing; Water and Land.)
- SB 1170 (expeditious redevelopment of affordable rental housing, Maui recovery focus): Passed with amendments. The Attorney General raised constitutional concerns under article XI, section 1 (special legislation); committees accepted AG-recommended deletions of sections 1 and 2 and revisions to section 3, narrowed the bill to recovery-related projects, and included language permitting administrative review for National Historic District compliance and recognition of preexisting county entitlements where applicable. Some members recorded reservations about statewide scope versus a Maui-specific focus. (Committees on Housing; Water and Land.)
- SB 1614 (transit-oriented development incentivization): Passed with amendments. Committees accepted technical edits from county planning staff, removed “county designated” wording in one paragraph, and required that any additional density allowed by the bill reserve certain units for eligible residents as defined in HRS §201H‑32. (Committees on Housing; Water and Land.)
- SB 18 (historic-preservation inventory appropriation): Passed with amendments; committees adjusted the effective/implementation date in committee report language and deferred the operative date to 07/01/2050 for statutory technical reasons. (Committees on Water and Land; Hawaiian Affairs.)
- SB 1002 (third-party consultants for SHPD reviews on affordable housing projects): Passed with amendments incorporating HHFDC and other technical suggestions; operative date in the committee report set to 07/01/2050. (Committees on Water and Land; Hawaiian Affairs.)
- SB 1266 (coastal erosion / inter-division burial site program): Passed with DLNR-recommended edits, a date change in the timeline (2026→2027) for certain deadlines, and an operative-date deferral to 07/01/2050; one senator recorded a reservation about OHA covering undefined future costs. (Committees on Water and Land; Hawaiian Affairs.)
Other procedural notes: Several bills included agency-proposed technical or substantive amendments from DLNR, the Attorney General, Department of Health, and county departments. Committee chairs instructed staff to draft amendments consistent with those recommendations in multiple cases. A small number of measures were deferred or had portions deferred as duplicative of items heard earlier.
Ending: Committee-level passage with amendments does not equal final enactment; bills returned to their respective floors with committee reports and recommended draft amendments for consideration by the full Senate.
