Some sessions of the Legislature are more enjoyable than others. This one is shaping up to be no fun at all.

The killjoy this year is a politically painful chore Gov. Josh Green has assigned to state lawmakers. He wants them to “pause” a series of scheduled state income tax cuts that would save Hawaiʻi taxpayers billions of dollars in the years ahead.

Green is essentially asking each member of the Legislature to cast election-year votes that will roll back a huge tax cut they promised to voters less than two years ago.

In the weeks ahead lawmakers will hear at least one bill to do as Green has asked, but they don’t seem to be looking forward to it.

“Everyone’s quiet about it,” said Joe Kent, executive vice president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaiʻi. “Even behind the scenes they’re quiet.”

This all started with a modest tax cut proposal for working families that Green pitched to lawmakers in late 2023 before the start of the 2024 session.

The state had some money to work with, and Green’s tax cut proposal was an appealing idea in an election year. It was so popular that an enthusiastic Legislature did Green one better: Lawmakers voted unanimously for a gigantic multi-year, multibillion-dollar reduction in state income taxes, and Green cheerfully signed the tax cut bill into law.

Two years later, the federal government is cutting support for Medicaid and food aid for the poor, and Green wants the state to make up the difference. To do that, Green is now asking lawmakers to pass a bill to “defer” any further tax cuts starting next year. The governor isn’t saying how long that deferral may last.

As Republican Sen. Kurt Fevella griped at one of the first budget hearings of this session: “We was happy to put in our flyers and let everybody know how much we going to work for the people and give them a tax break, and now we gotta tuck tail.”

“We’re already getting the phone calls,” remarked veteran Democratic Sen. Donna Kim at the same hearing on Jan. 7. Constituents do not understand how lawmakers could boastfully promise a tax cut, she said, and then reverse themselves less than two years later.

Lawmakers’ final decision on the tax cuts probably won’t become public until late April, which is a scant three months before the Aug. 8 primary election. It seems unlikely Green will have a formidable opponent when he runs for reelection this year, but other prominent Democrats might.

The entire state House and half of the Senate must run for reelection this year, including Kim and Fevella, so the political timing for this issue is just about as bad as it gets.

Richard Borreca, a former newspaper columnist who covered Hawaiʻi politics for 50 years, said the tax controversy probably won’t be a disaster for many state House incumbents because local races tend to hinge on neighborhood issues such as traffic or sidewalks, and not high-level tax policy.

On the other hand, “If you have opposition, this certainly would be a talking point for the opposition to use,” Borreca said. “If you’re a Republican, you just blow it up as much as you can.”

Borreca said the Democrats in the Legislature can’t politically walk away from Green, and instead will have to make a pitch that they are doing their best and getting what they can for their districts “in this time of limited finances.”

But the whole discussion will be unpleasant. Kent of the Grassroot think tank has already charged that Green’s proposal for a pause in the income tax cuts is actually a “tax hike,” and House Republican Minority Leader Diamond Garcia calls Green’s plan ridiculous.

The Green administration drafted House Bill 2306 and Senate Bill 3125 to halt the scheduled tax cuts at the end of this year, but the public has not had an opportunity to testify on either bill yet. The House Finance Committee scheduled the first public hearing for HB 2306 for 10 a.m. Tuesday.

“I don’t think any lawmaker really wants to talk about this publicly, including the governor,” Kent said in an interview Thursday.

But the Legislature is now approaching the halfway point of the session, and lawmakers will be giving some strong hints in the weeks ahead about the fiscal options they plan to pursue.

Most bills must be positioned for floor votes in the House and Senate by Friday, and floor voting on those measures will be completed by March 12.

The House Finance Committee has the extra task of producing a first draft of the state budget for House members to vote on by March 16. That draft budget must then be approved by the House by March 18 and sent to the Senate for further consideration and amendments.

Before this year’s legislative session officially began, members of the Senate Ways and Means Committee asked Acting Budget Director Seth Colby about potential alternatives to deferring the tax cuts, such as stripping funding from vacant positions or diverting unused money from special funds.

On the revenue side of the ledger, lawmakers have been considering increasing the state excise tax on rental car companies as a way of raising more money.

A Senate committee also briefly discussed changing the tax code to squeeze more tax revenue out of real estate investment trusts, but senators quickly backed away from that idea by proposing another study of the issue.

Lawmakers are also advancing a bill to tap the state’s Emergency and Budget Reserve Fund — also known as the rainy day fund — to help balance the budget, but it is unclear if that could serve as an alternative to Green’s proposed tax cut rollback.

The rainy day fund currently has about $1.6 billion in reserves, and House Finance Committee Chair Chris Todd said Wednesday that bill is being kept alive as “largely a placeholder bill in case things get kind of rough in the next couple of months.”