The Legislature unanimously passed the state budget, which included how about $130 million of the state’s Green Fee will be spent.
This is the first year lawmakers had to decide how to spend revenue from the Green Fee tax on tourists — designed to pay for climate projects.
The funds were to go to projects in three areas: protecting natural resources, increasing climate resiliency, and sustainable tourism.
The governorʻs Green Fee Advisory Council recommended a series of projects at the start of the session, and the legislature finalized the list in the state budget.
“In large measure, it does accomplish those original goals. Of course, it doesn't have everything that the council was asking for,” said Green Fee Advisory Council Chair Jeff Mikulina.
While some of the final projects remained the same, like millions of dollars for coral reef and ahupuaʻa restoration, wildfire reduction and retrofitting homes to withstand hurricanes, some projects didn’t seem clearly related to the three buckets written in the law.
“There are some projects in there that are certainly head-scratchers where it would require some creative imagination to shoehorn them into that original intent,” said Mikulina.
There’s the $200,000 allocation for a cattle slaughterhouse, $350,000 for a sports and signature events study, $800,000 for ADA compliance at Waipahu High School — and the largest allocation of any project on the list: $7 million for a Food and Product Innovation Network.
Most of the changes were inserted by the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Mikulina explained that the law only requires the Governor’s request to fall into those three specific buckets, which leaves the Legislature with significant leeway.
“Act 96, that created the Green Fee, while the legislative intent was very clear, the Legislature can choose to do what they'd like with these dollars,” he said. “And that's perhaps something that should be explored in the future to really ensure that the dollars are being put to work for that original intent.”
House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee Chair Nicole Lowen pushed for guardrails around the power the Legislature has to spend the Green Fee funds.
“That's why I like the idea of deciding what are some important buckets we think funds should go into and just deciding upfront we're going to put some funding in these buckets,” she said.
“For example, we know there's a desire to do a lot to support community groups and community stewardship, and I think that could be a program managed by the departments where they could open up for grant applications and then use their expertise to decide and sort of take some of the politics out of it, of this is in your district or my pet project.”
Lowen introduced a bill that failed this session that would have put portions of the Green Fee into special funds dedicated to particular issues like watershed conservation and wildfire prevention.
One of the biggest projects that didn’t make the final cut was a community-led regenerative and sustainable tourism initiative. It would have provided opportunities for visitors to get involved with community organizations.
It’s one that both Mikulina and Hawaiian Council Destination Stewardship Director Carmela Resuma, another member of the Green Fee Council, hoped could get funding next year.
“ We are really good at telling people what not to do. Don't touch the monk seals. Don't do this, but we want to invite folks in, in a meaningful way,” Resuma said
“Have conversations that are led by the community on how to educate visitors, how to move them to be stewards of the land as well for the short periods that they're here … at its core that's a really unique intersection of the Green Fee because it’s the visitors that are paying into it and so let's not only educate them, but also give them a really meaningful opportunity to give back,” Resuma said.
It’s not clear what comes next for the Green Fee Advisory Council, or if the process will work in the same way for the coming year. The council is set to end its work when the legislative session ends.
Lowen thought that there could be changes to the decision-making process in the interim. She added that when the Green Fee Advisory Council presented its call for ideas over the summer, it seemed like a call for applications for organizations to receive funding, which wasn’t the case.
“ It cannot be granted out legally as a grant-in-aid; it's not set up that way,” she said. “That really led to an expectation, the way that it was handed down had these very specific line-item descriptions that were clearly written as a response to these quote-unquote, applications. And so that also created a bit of an unrealistic expectation that certain specific organizations expected to get funding out of it.”
Mikulina explained that the council was focused on getting the Green Fee allocations out the door for the first year, and that there were many lessons learned.
“ I think there will be a lot of conversation around that process, what is the best, most transparent, productive way to identify how to spend these dollars on an annual basis,” he said.
“The work that went into establishing this framework, the evaluation rubric, a lot of that groundwork is done, it can be tweaked. And I’m curious to see how the administration and legislature approaches it going forward,” Mikulina said.
Despite the changes, Resuma pointed to the project allocations as progress.
“I looked at that, and I said we are better than before,” she said. “I'm forever a glass-half-full kind of person, and just looking at the progress. At this point last year, we didn't have projects. We didn't have the millions that are going back into community, into ʻāina, and I would celebrate that. I tell folks, publicly, privately. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than it was last year? Absolutely.”
What comes next, Resuma added, is how the projects are implemented. There is a portion of the Green Fee that will go toward monitoring project status.
A pending lawsuit by the cruise industry may impact the funds available. Gov. Josh Green can also still veto items in the budget, which he will announce at the end of June.
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