A state Senate bill pushing for publicly financed elections, or “clean elections,” died Friday during a conference committee meeting.
The bill, SB 1543, would have provided qualifying candidates running for all state and county offices with public funding to finance their election campaigns. Some believe the option would allow those without corporate interests to stand a chance running against incumbents and those with large donors.
“The bottom line is, we didn’t get either money committee’s approval for any of the various versions of the bill that we drafted,” said Sen. Karl Rhoads, an Oahu Democrat, who introduced the bill.
The two committees that did not sign off on the bill were the Senate Ways and Means Committee and the House Committee on Finance.
Ways and Means Chair Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz and Finance Committee Chair Rep. Kyle Yamashita, both Oahu Democrats, did not respond to requests for comment prior to this story’s publication.
“I was getting a lot of comments from the caucus, from many members who were skeptical about the bill,” Big Island Rep. David Tarnas said, who worked closely with Rhoads on the legislation. “They were skeptical whether or not the public actually wanted to spend public money on campaigns.”
Tarnas said other concerns centered around emboldening “fringe candidates” who might get enough donations to qualify for funding but weren’t serious about running, as well as districts being flooded with signs and fliers during election season as candidates rushed to spend their remaining funds.
“Each one of these, I felt, were not reasons to kill the bill,” Tarnas said. “I felt it was a very reasonable, low-risk kind of approach, but it obviously was not enough. I’m disappointed.”
Rhoads said the relatively new concept of publicly financed campaigns raised concerns for some lawmakers.
“We know how the current system works, but we’ve never been through the process with the other system,” Rhoads said. “Almost everyone elected statewide, in any office, got elected under the private financing model, including me, so that’s what we’re used to. We know we can win this way, but we don’t know if we can win using this other model, because most of us have never done it.”
Amendments were made to the bill to address some of these concerns. One draft lowered the cost allocation from $30 million down to $700,000 for the first two years, another changed the policy to a pilot program, and another extended the start date to 2028 so it would not impact the next governor’s race, which would require the most funding.
“Rep. Tarnas and I thought it was worth making the effort to come up with a compromise bill if we could, but in the end, we couldn’t get a sign off from the money chairs, even with the most watered-down version,” Rhoads said. “The fact that this bill got as much traction as it did, though, indicates there’s quite a bit of interest out there for something like it.”
Different drafts of the bill collectively received more than 900 pages of public testimony, mainly in support.
“It disappointed an awful lot of people who are voters,” said League of Women Voters Hawaii County President Beppie Shapiro about the death of the legislation. “This bill would have really helped voters be the primary influence in choosing the people who represent us, as opposed to the wealthier interests that currently have a heavy thumb on the scale.”
No official reason was given Friday by either money committee as to why they opted not to sign off on the bill.
“There should at least be an expectation that when a bill is killed, the reasoning is made clear,” Shapiro said. “That would certainly help improve the public’s ability to engage with the Legislature.”
Evan Weber, co-founder of the organization Our Hawaii that helped draft and support the bill, expressed a similar frustration.
“You have this proposal that would have greatly increased democracy in the capital and in the counties, being killed at the eleventh hour, in the shadows, during the most nontransparent part of the entire Legislature with the least amount of public and community input allowed,” he said. “I think, fundamentally, we have to say what happened on Friday was the pinnacle of anti-democracy.”
Weber plans to continue advocating for publicly financed elections during the next legislative session.
“Many of our champions in the capital did support this, and we’re just going to keep building our coalition, educating voters, engaging people at the grassroots level in districts around the island,” he said. “The people of Hawaii are ready for this, and we’re not backing down.”
Email Grant Phillips at gphillips@hawaiitribune-herald.com.