Race to the top: Brian Schatz doesnʻt have to run for reelection until 2028, but that doesnʻt mean heʻs not on the campaign trail.

Hawaiʻiʻs senior U.S. senator has been contacting colleagues to let them know he wants the job of Democratic whip when Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin retires next year.

The whip is the No. 2 position in the Senate Democratic hierarchy, behind Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who at age 74 could conceivably retire when his current term ends in 2029.

That would leave the powerful No. 1 post among Senate Democrats open, but maybe The Blog is getting ahead of itself. For now, Schatz, a youthful 52 and currently the chief deputy whip, will certainly be a contender for the whip post when Durbin rides off into the sunset, as he recently said he planned to do.

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“Schatz has emerged as a favorite after volunteering to pick up some of the whip’s duties in helping to manage the floor,” The Hill reported Friday.

The same article noted that Schatz has already been endorsed for whip by another high-profile Democratic senator, Cory Booker of New Jersey, who recently garnered national attention when he commandeered the Senate floor for a record-breaking 25-hour speech condemning the Trump administration.

Thatʻs especially good news for Schatz because Booker could have sought the post himself. Other potential contenders, according to The Hill, are Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Washington Sen. Patty Murray.

The election of a new whip will occur by secret balloting of Senate Democrats after the 2026 general election.

The whip job seems tailor-made for Schatz, who is generally well-liked by his colleagues and has been garnering national attention himself of late. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has placed a “blanket hold” on hundreds of President Donald Trumpʻs nominees for State Department positions.

The move started out in February as a protest against drastic cutbacks at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Schatz has expanded his efforts since then.

“Their lawlessness is escalating and they are intentionally destroying the economy, and so I don’t think we should make anything easy going forward,” Schatz told the online news organization Axios.

Taxing developments: More money for school safety and more cost for whoever it is that still smokes cigarettes in the year 2025 were among the measures that managed to get through conference committee late last week. Others died a slow and painful death in the endless wait for sign-off from legislative leadership and the seemingly unchallengeable House Finance and Senate Ways and Means chairs.

The final version of Senate Bill 1231, which cleared a House-Senate conference committee late Friday afternoon, would impose a new $5 fee on motorists by the end of this year to fund the Safe Routes to Schools Program.

Lawmakers earlier had proposed increasing the state weight tax on trucks and SUVs that weigh from 7,000 to 10,000 pounds, but scrapped that idea in favor of the new flat fee on all vehicles.

The money from the new surcharge would go to the Safe Routes to Schools program, which supports projects such as paths and bike lanes to encourage pedestrian and bicycle traffic within a one-mile radius of school zones. Supporters say that program is underfunded.

Lawmakers did not say how much money would be raised by the new fee, but Hawaiʻi has more than 400,000 registered automobiles.

The proposed cigarette tax increase would boost that tax from 16 cents to 18 cents per cigarette, imposing a total levy of $3.60 per pack. The state Tax Department has estimated that increase would raise an extra $4 million a year.

Sen. Donna Kim announced Friday that 4 cents of the new 18-cent tax will be directed to the Hawaiʻi Cancer Research Special Fund to pay off money owed by the University of Hawaiʻi Cancer Center for construction and maintenance of the center.

Then starting in 2030 the share of the cigarette tax committed to the cancer center’s debt would be reduced to 2 cents per cigarette.

The bill also earmarks up to $7.4 million a year in cigarette taxes to support development of a statewide system of trauma care, and up to $8.8 million per year to help finance Hawaiʻi’s community health centers. It also commits up to $8.8 million in cigarette taxes to support emergency medical services in Hawaiʻi.

HART dodges a Donovan bullet: House and Senate negotiators also amended Senate Bill 934 on Friday to provide the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation with quicker access to millions of dollars in excise and hotel room taxes to help finance the Honolulu rail project.

An earlier version of the bill would have imposed conditions on HART that would have been impossible to meet, effectively limiting HART’s access to funding for the project.

Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz had inserted language into the bill requiring HART to complete the entire rail line and also build a 1,600-stall parking garage in Pearl Highlands before HART could draw money from the mass transit special fund.

That parking garage was supposed to serve Dela Cruz’s Central Oʻahu constituents, who would use it as a place to park their cars to catch the Skyline trains into downtown. However, HART deferred plans for that garage indefinitely as part of a larger cost-cutting effort.

The final version of SB 934 says HART must do an analysis by next year of potential partners and financial options for building the park and ride.

It also requires that any leftover money after HART completes the rail line from East Kapolei to Kakaʻako must be used to build the Pearl Highlands garage, and to extend the rail line to Ala Moana Center.

Dela Cruz issued a newsletter to his constituents earlier this month complaining that an earlier Civil Beat story on SB 934 (he calls us a “media blog” but doesn’t name us) was misleading because it “implied” the measure would withhold all money in the mass transit special fund from the rail project until Dela Cruz’s demands were met.

In fact, the bill as it emerged from Dela Cruz’s Ways and Means Committee specifically states “no sums shall be disbursed” from the fund until the director of Budget and Finance determined the rail line had been completed and the parking garage had been built.

Stop, in the name of the law: Law enforcement agencies lost a tough fight last week when a conference committee agreed to force police agencies to abide by a statewide standard for hot pursuits.

Tired of waiting for the years-old Statewide Law Enforcement Standards Board to, well, actually come up with standards let alone put them in place, lawmakers passed House Bill 277 which requires the Attorney General’s Office to come up with a model vehicular pursuit law by next summer and the agencies to adopt it by January 2027.

The bill also prohibits police officers from shooting at moving vehicles except in the most dire of circumstances.

Honolulu has had a particular problem with police chases gone wrong, costing the taxpayers a lot of money, including the incident in 2019 when a suspected drunk driver being pursued by police along crowded Ala Moana Boulevard slammed into a group of pedestrians, killing three. That cost us more than $15 million.

The new model policy would aim to set restrictions on when, where and what types of offenses would justify a high-speed pursuit.

On a happier note, law enforcement has won at least one battle for improved public safety this session. A bill prohibiting the possession, transfer and sale of ghost guns in Hawaiʻi became law earlier this month. It also includes a mandatory minimum sentence for use of a ghost gun when committing a felony.

Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm said in a recent Sunshine Interview that the law will help deter the use of ghost guns, as they are now clearly defined in state statute: a firearm, including a firearm frame or firearm receiver, without a serial number registered with a federally licensed manufacturer.

As of Friday, 27 bills passed by the Hawaiʻi Legislature this session have become law.

Dozens more, including most of those in this edition of The Blog, still need final approval this week when the House and Senate meet in their full glory on Wednesday and Friday in floor sessions.

The Legislature is scheduled to adjourn sine die on Friday. And you know how they like to stick to their self-imposed deadlines no matter what still needs to be done.