Editor’s note: Hawaiʻi State Rep. Chris Todd is taking over one of the key financial positions in the Hawaiʻi Legislature amid growing uncertainty about how federal budget cuts might affect the islands. In an interview edited for length and clarity, the Hilo legislator discusses the challenges ahead and the reforms he’d like to help achieve.

With your new role as Finance Committee chair, how is this post-session period different for you than previous ones?

Normally this time of year, as a neighbor island legislator, I’m probably at the Capitol one to two days a week, and the rest of the week I’m back in the district. Some of that’s just being a dad, being a high school football coach, trying to really be present, to make up for a lot of time you lose during the session, but also meeting with constituents, doing site visits, district priorities.

But right now I’m pretty much on Oʻahu Monday through Friday for the foreseeable future, partly because there’s really just so much to learn, so many people to meet, onboarding staff the first time. There’s also just the logistics of moving offices and hiring and that sort of thing. What I’m trying to do is get up to speed as fast as possible, especially with how things are evolving on the federal level, there’s so much information, and I’m really trying to do my best to do a deep dive, so that I’m best prepared.

The governor said the other day that he didn’t think it was probably going to be necessary to have a special session on budgetary matters because of the way the Trump tax bill in D.C. has emerged, basically delaying some of the what’s going to happen with with Medicaid. Is that the way you see it too?

As the impacts of this legislation become clearer, the Legislature and administration can more adequately assess the need for a special session. While much of the direct impact to the state budget appears to be delayed one fiscal year, we are still working through the details.

What are your hopes for next session in terms of any changes you foresee in the way that the Finance Committee would be operating? You said recently you were open to having fewer bills referred to the money committee.

We’re assessing that right now. I’m meeting with a lot of people inside the building, outside the building and also people who have done the job before, and getting a sense for what processes are in place that really work well, both internally, but also for the public and the best interest of the state. But also things that can be improved on. In fact, I just got out of a staff meeting, we’re actively assessing that and just trying to get as much information as we can.

We do recognize how much power is vested in this committee.

I do think that there has been a lot of attention around referrals and what defines fiscal impact, and I think that’s something that we’re going to kind of continue to have a conversation about. This year I was part of that referral process for the first time under Speaker (Nadine) Nakamura and we actively sought ways to ensure that the bills going to the Finance Committee were fiscal in nature.

With that being said, you’re in the first year of a biennium, you’re talking about over 1,500 bills just on the House side, plus another 1,500-plus on the Senate side. And it can be difficult to really drill down on that, and to a certain degree, it does become a little subjective.

And then even when you find something with fiscal impact, there’s an assessment of, is this significant enough to warrant a Finance Committee referral? So we’re really thinking in depth about that. But the goal would be that I’m going to have my hands full, particularly as a first year Finance chair anyway, and the last thing I’m going to need is to overburden the committee with matters that are not fiscal in nature.

We do recognize how much power is vested in this committee, but also, because of that process of finance release, this is adding an additional layer of approval, which does make legislation harder to pass. So we want to make sure that scrutiny is there when it is deserved.

And you’re saying that you and the speaker see eye to eye about trying to address the referrals to the Finance Committee and possibly have fewer?

Yeah, definitely. And I believe, off the top of my head, this year we ended up with about 200 fewer pieces of legislation with the Finance Committee than we did two years prior. So we did actively work toward that this year, but it’s something we want to continue to make progress on.

Your predecessor as Finance chair, Kyle Yamashita, was calling for a study of how some other states produce fiscal notes detailing the financial implications of bills before they’re considered by legislators. How do you feel about the concept of fiscal notes?

Chair Yamashita gets the credit, and our leadership group. I know Vice-Speaker (Linda) Ichiyama has been working on this. When this was discussed a lot at the beginning of session, they were proactive, and they sought out this information from other states. We have a compendium of what this looks like in other states, that data has been collected.

The challenge going forward, if we were to implement something like this, is that in the states that do have this integrated into the legislative process, it typically comes with 10 to 15 full-time designated staff. So looking at all of these examples in other states, the question is going to be, what model works best for our Legislature and for our state?

I think the intent would be that we kind of give things a trial run this coming year and get a sense for what work product is actually useful for legislators, for chairs and for the public, so that if we do implement a full fiscal note process at some point, that it’s actually valuable and is providing some sort of savings for the state, instead of adding additional costs.

So we do have, thankfully, a number of examples from other states to choose from, and we’ll kind of pilot that out internally, find a way to make this a public-facing work product, and then gain feedback before we potentially commit ourselves to something down the road.

But that’s going to have to be a conversation with the administration and with the Senate also. Because in most states, this is either a function of the administration providing these fiscal notes — it’s a legal mandate on the administration and their departments — or it’s some sort of joint fiscal office between the House and Senate.

How do you see a pilot project working? Would that be fiscal notes for just certain bills?

I would imagine that that’s where we’d go, partly because we’re not planning on adding additional staff resources until we have this figured out. Just the amount of work necessary to generate these notes and then potentially amend them through the legislative process is a tremendous amount of work, so I think we’re going to  have to be a little choosy.

But my intention is we compile all the data, we make some recommendations to the body, and we pitch it to our body internally, for “Hey, what do you what do you think from these various models? How would you like to pilot this out?” And then we can use that feedback to really get a better picture of what’s going to be our kind of best bang for our buck. And then, if everything goes perfectly, and everyone’s on board, there’s something we could expand upon.

Have the discussions about this included the Senate money chair, Donovan Dela Cruz?

Just kind of exploratory so far, getting a sense for, “Hey, what’s the conversation like on your side? And do you think this would be valuable and all that?”

But I think this early on this doesn’t necessarily need to be something that we’re fully coordinated on, until we have kind of a sample work product, and we can talk over the logistics of, “Does this work? Does it not work?”

How do you feel so far about the communication lines with with the Senate and its Ways and Means Committee?

I think it’s been great. Chair Dela Cruz is extremely passionate about a lot of the same things I am. A lot of it’s around capturing revenue within the state, trying to replace our imports and our reliance on a number of goods and services. How can we generate that industry here, keep money flowing within our economy and be more circular?

So whether it’s farm-to-school or local industries, I think we have a lot of the same passions, and I’m excited to kind of share that with him.

Where push often comes to shove with the money chairs is during conference committee, and of course, the release process — the power that they have over any bill that has come through their committees. Civil Beat has been focusing on that for quite some time now, that it’s just unseemly, especially when bills that don’t appear to be money measures are killed.

The example that we caught in this last session was prohibiting campaign contributions from people who are connected to state contractors and grantees. Do you understand the frustration?

Oh sure. In general this is a time where it certainly feels like there’s less trust in our institutions than ever before. And especially in light of recent scandals both within the Legislature but also extending to permitting and processing and that sort of thing, it totally makes sense.

And I think that the first step on our end is taking that second look and being more judicious for referrals. These are decisions I want to make. Like I said, I’m going to have my hands full already.

And then beyond that it’s going to be how do we best create a culture of transparency so that we can work to restore that trust a little bit? Easier said than done. I may have strong views on an issue here and there, but I want to do my best to stay in my lane, because they’re going to be tough enough decisions, especially with the current climate, without venturing off into things that are not purely fiscal in nature.

Obviously some work has been done, some money has been saved last session, to try to help address budget shortfalls if they happen because of the federal government. But should some additional revenue-generating proposals be considered at this point?

I would say, just from a from a pure numbers perspective, barring some dramatic change in revenue projection, that a lot of that’s just going to be necessary.

There are certain tools that we have available to us in budgeting to move some things around here and there, to free up cash, to make sure that we’re stable. But we do have this larger responsibility toward ensuring that the operation for state government is secure and it’s reliable.

Some tough decisions are going to be have to be made, I’m sure some of that around revenue generation.

And for us to provide these essential services, we need to make sure that we’re really taking care of the long-term financial stability of state government and and right now with the federal impact, the outlook is not great.

Some tough decisions are going to be have to be made, I’m sure some of that around revenue generation. But that’s going to be a conversation within the state House, with our counterparts in the Senate, within the administration, and we’re going to need buy-in and an agreement from everyone involved, in addition to just vetting out public testimony through the hearing process and finding a way forward.

But the bottom line is, it just kind of is what it is. There’s not much maneuverability around the dollar figures when you’re talking about, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in direct impact on an annual basis.

Are you open to cannabis legalization and the tax revenue that would result from that?

I am personally. If you ask me as a state representative where I stand on that, I am very supportive. But at this point, I do not think that there’s enough support in the House, barring, you know, changing some hearts and minds. So until that changes, that’s just the reality.

Does that kind of parallel your personal position as far as the possibility of legalized gambling and tax revenue from that, which of course is another one that’s been resisted for a long time?

I think that one, maybe the devil is in the details. But similarly, I don’t think that there’s currently broad support in the state House. So it’ll come down to what is the specific proposal, because I think there’s certain things that would have relatively little negative impact while providing some revenue and also capturing some revenue that’s currently leaving the state.

So if we can find that correct balance, then great, but as it currently stands, I don’t think there’s enough support unless it’s like a specific proposal that hasn’t really been vetted out yet.

One more thing regarding revenue. What about pulling back a little on the income tax reduction? That was a fairly dramatic step, and most of that is still to take effect in the future. Are you personally open to looking at that?

I think at this point we’ve got to look at everything. So I don’t think that there’s an option that’s off the table.

I do think that a large part of how that income tax cut came to be was a desire to shift tax burden away from local residents. You’re restructuring income tax. You’re targeting revenue sources that are either generated from visitors, or it’s from non-resident property owners, right?

That’s the motivation in terms of how we get there and whether the current fiscal picture forces us to change course. I think that’s something we’ve got to at least look at.

We pass tax legislation every single year as a Legislature, our tax code changes every single session. These things are on the table every year. It may just be coming more into focus in this upcoming year because of these impending fiscal issues.

Your predecessor was pretty open about the fact that he really wanted to see the counties look at their revenue generation options. Do you agree with where he came down there?

Well, I do think that it’s from a place of trying to address this fundamental issue with our tax code, that we’ve really incentivized land speculation here. Probably, I wasn’t around at the time, but I’d imagine it was due in large part to the large sugar plantation owners helping to structure our tax code in a way where we have the lowest property taxes in the country and among the highest state taxes in the country.

The current structure of the session, honestly, isn’t ideal — this time crunch that’s largely self-imposed.

But that’s going to require a lot of ongoing conversation between state leaders and county leaders, and we do have to respect home rule and their ability to make their own decisions. So we want to make sure that we try to find a way forward that disincentivizes this holding of land, but also the speculation of buying up local property as an investment.

If we can find that balance, then great, and then if that’s not something that’s in the cards, we need to find a way at the state level to use the mechanisms that we already have to accomplish something similar.

Are county leaders among the folks that you’re meeting with?

Oh yeah, I actually met with (Honolulu) Mayor (Rick) Blangiardi today. I have a good relationship with (Hawaiʻi County) Mayor Alameda, who I’ve known since I was growing up. We’re going to continue to do that outreach as we meet with our department heads at the state level, but also with local leadership and trying our best to kind of build a relationship so that we can come together to make really critical decisions going forward.

We want this to feel collaborative and also just leverage the brain power and expertise that exists within the counties too. We don’t want to just silo ourselves off.

As a candidate you’ve said that you support a lot of reforms, including a statewide citizens initiative process, definitely a longer session, term limits if they’re reasonable. Do you still feel that way?

I haven’t changed much. The current structure of the session, honestly, isn’t ideal — this time crunch that’s largely self-imposed. But in terms of how you restructure, or if you restructure, that’s kind of above my pay grade, but that’s a conversation that’s ongoing.

The citizens initiative thing gets complicated. What we don’t want to have happen is what happens in some of these other states where this is really weaponized by special interests to drive an agenda forward. So if you were to implement something like that, which is a very broad political question that is not really a finance question, you definitely need to make sure that there’s safeguards in place.

And regarding term limits?

I think in concept, sure, though I think it just depends on the number of years and what the details look like. What I don’t think we want is what we have in a lot of states, particularly in the Midwest, where a lot of these governments are largely run by unelected civil servants because that’s where the institutional knowledge is, and that’s where the base is.

So there’s some sort of balance to strike there, but I do understand the general frustration with folks who stick around and the perception of a lack of churn or movement. I would say, though, that in the state House, we’ve turned over so quickly that in some ways, you run into the opposite problem. I think our average length of service right now is about five years. And we’re quickly having to get up to speed and become experts on things, because we’ve really lost a lot of that institutional knowledge that we we had when I started.

So there’s a balance to strike.

What’s this new gig going to do to your football coach position?

Well, you know, I’ve already committed to coach for this year, so I’m currently at the Capitol during the day, and then I’m coaching in the afternoons, and then finding a way to balance that with home life and my district responsibilities. I think for this year, it’ll probably be okay, but long term, that’s going to be tough for sure.

Are you an assistant coach or what?

Yeah, an assistant coach at Kamehameha Kapalama (in Honolulu), an offensive coordinator.

Good luck with that. You’re going to be a busy man.

Yeah, for sure.

Civil Beat’s reporting on the Hawaiʻi State Legislature is supported in part by the Donald and Astrid Monson Education Fund.