The regular session of the 2025 Hawaiʻi Legislature is over, and there can be no more pretending.

Overcoming the dysfunction that plagues the Legislature and the wider tarpit of corruption that mars Hawaiʻi politics can be accomplished only by going around the current legislative leaders who block genuine reform efforts at every turn.

That became devastatingly clear when they killed House Bill 371 in the same manner they kill so many others: Allowing it to gain unanimous approval in both chambers, then suffocating it with no “release” — and no explanation — from money committee chairs in the final days.

In this case they stuck a brazen blow to defend the influence of special interests.

The target was a well-thought-out measure to close a gaping loophole in campaign finance law that allows people connected to government contractors and grantees to donate huge sums to politicians: pay-to-play. 

Their audacity is bracing, and they probably hope to have broken the spirit of reformers. But there are opportunities ahead — the next session, the next election and beyond — to loosen their stranglehold on the Legislature.

Current lawmakers get the first shot. After that, itʻs a question of who will answer the call and become new candidates for the Legislature. Finally, the opportunity for a better state government will be in the hands of voters.

Let Majorities Rule

The first opportunity requires nothing less than mutiny against the Senate president, the House speaker, the money committee chairs and their cabal of disciples.

Do enough legislators have the courage? They should, because the majority of senators and representatives currently endure their public lives as powerless pawns.

Rank-and-file legislators and even most of the committee chairs toil for months to create and then shepherd all manner of significant bills, only to see them die in the dark hours of conference committee with no explanation.

Why do they put up with this? The only reason for these lawmakers not to rebel is the culture of fear within the Legislature. In an internal version of pay-to-play, the rank-and-file worry their own bills will be killed by legislative leaders if they don’t go along.

Thereʻs not a lot to lose, and so much to gain — for their constituents and for themselves.

Majorities rule in the Hawaiʻi Legislature. Majorities elect the leaders who dole out the committee chairmanships. And majorities adopt the rules of operation.

Before you contend that a revolution canʻt happen, think back to exactly a decade ago when the Senate president was ousted just before adjournment.

At that time, alas, the gavel merely passed from one faction of powerbrokers to another.

Whatʻs needed now is not another secretly orchestrated power grab, but rather a grass-roots uprising of disenfranchised legislators. They could start the session with wide-open elections for speaker and president instead of voting in closed-door party caucuses.

If there arenʻt enough votes to topple the current leaders, theyʻd at least be put on notice that times are changing. Either way, the rebels could push for new rules of engagement:

• Reduce the power of committee chairs to single-handedly kill bills and instead require a full committee vote for a bill to advance or die.
• Implement term limits for committee chairs — two sessions? four? — to open up the subject matter committees to fresh ideas that might not be influenced by the same special interests.
• Stop referring bills with little or no immediate fiscal impact to the money committees.
• Change the reason for the session to come to an end from some arbitrary date and time to a concept that lawmakers will go home when the people’s work is done. That means the cost of bills must be known well in advance of final conference committees, agreement should be reached without the need for hectic last-minute meetings, and adjournment must be extended if necessary.
• Insist on accountability and transparency throughout. Don’t allow lawmakers to vote “yes with reservations” or introduce bills “by request” of someone who isnʻt identified.

Even under the current rules, rank-and-file legislators have more power than they ever use, such as the ability to challenge their committee chairs’ recommendations and the power to pull measures out of committees and back to the floor if the chairs are ignoring them. They need to stop being afraid to do that.

Finally, the pay-to-play bill must be reintroduced next session and it should become a litmus test for whether legislators deserve to remain in office.

Wanted: More Candidates And Voters

A year from now, the campaign season will be well underway. Incumbent legislators can either run for reelection as tacit enablers of the status quo or as battle-scarred crusaders for change.

The proof will lie in what they did in the 2026 session. Ultimately, until things change, it needs to become more politically perilous to support leadership than to challenge it.

Senate President Ron Kouchi, by the way, has strongly indicated he won’t seek reelection next year, so senators should move to replace him next session with someone who can loosen the grip of entrenched powerbrokers like Ways and Means Committee chair Donovan Dela Cruz.

Meanwhile, there’s an urgent need for strong new candidates to challenge incumbents and seek open seats.

There’s fresh hope here, because after the next election legislators will be paid $97,896 annually. In 2028 they’ll make $101,808. That’s real money for a real job.

The pay increase — up from the current annual salary of $74,160 — should attract civic-minded people to seek the job, especially those with professional and technical backgrounds and even younger adults who are raising families and might bring a perspective the Legislature could use more of.

A couple of measures passed by the Legislature this session might provide further encouragement, but the Legislature needs to do more in 2026 to make it easier to run for office.

House Bill 134 allows people to file their candidate paperwork online, while Senate Bill 1202 makes official the current state policy of allowing candidates to use campaign contributions for child care and other caregiver expenses.

But a much stronger incentive for potential new candidates was lost when House Bill 370 to even the electoral playing field by expanding the state’s public campaign finance program died when, you guessed it, it couldnʻt get “release” during conference committee.

We need to be take a close look at the political parties, too, and explore what barriers they put up that make it hard for people to get on the ballot. The fact that it is almost impossible to win election as an independent or nonpartisan candidate in Hawaiʻi needs to change.

The bottom line on motivating more registered voters to take the time to fill out their ballots should be the dire need to reform state government.

Efforts to increase Hawaiʻi’s traditionally low voter turnout got mixed results this session. House Bill 408 passed, extending the deadline to register to vote by mail from 30 to 10 days prior to an election, but several measures to increase the number of voting centers open on Election Day failed to even get committee hearings.

Still, the bottom line on motivating more registered voters to take the time to fill out their ballots should be the dire need to reform state government.

Can incumbents point to a record of pushing for change? What are challengers saying about reform? If itʻs hard to tell where they stand (for instance, if they donʻt respond to Q&A surveys by Civil Beat and others), do they really deserve votersʻ support?

Another ConCon Vote In Just Three Years

While the 2026 election could prove pivotal, the 2028 vote may be even more critical.

Thatʻs the next time voters will be asked, as the state constitution requires, if they want to hold a constitutional convention where citizen delegates would convene with the opportunity to go over the heads of the Legislature and propose constitutional amendments directly to voters.

Some possibilities that should be on the table for discussion:

• A statewide citizens initiative/referendum/recall process.
• A full-time Legislature that operates under the rules of the Sunshine Law.
• Legislative term limits.
• Any other needed reforms that havenʻt already occurred, including banning the contributions that were addressed in the pay-to-play bill.

There hasnʻt been a ConCon since 1978, when 34 constitutional amendments were proposed to voters, who then approved all of them.

Last time around in 2018, voters rejected holding a ConCon after being barraged by scare tactics employed by the well-monied, entrenched powerbrokers who benefit from the status quo, including the public employee labor unions.

Opponents, who warned that elected ConCon delegates might trash the constitution we already have, outspent supporters by more than $665,000 to, well, zero.

Since then, high-profile bribery convictions have roiled state and local governments, and the resulting calls for reform have been repeatedly shot down by legislative leaders.

There will be three more legislative sessions before the ConCon vote, but if the rejections of meaningful reforms continue, voters might just be frustrated enough to ignore those scare tactics this time.

At some point, fear of the unknown will be dwarfed by fear of the known.