It is often impossible to predict which bills will pass during a legislative session.

Some die mysteriously, while others are resurrected at the 11th hour.

But at the beginning of the year, I was confident that the Legislature would increase the minimum wage.

The reasons seemed obvious:

• The need is urgent. The gap between the $10.10 minimum wage and what a single adult worker needs to earn — about $19 per hour — to cover basic living expenses, coupled with recent inflation, means that lower-income families are struggling more than ever.
• There is broad public support. A February 2022 poll found that 77% of residents wanted to raise the minimum wage, while an earlier poll showed that 57% of business leaders supported substantial minimum wage increases.
• Policymakers back it. Increasing the minimum wage topped the agendas of both House and Senate leadership at the beginning of the session, and the Hawai Democratic Party named it as a chief legislative priority.

Yet with just over a week left in the legislative session, no minimum wage bill has passed. The House and the Senate are caught up in a political game of chicken that could have devastating consequences.

If the two chambers can’t come to an agreement by the end of this week, Hawaii’s working families will need to wait another year for relief.

How did we get here?

Tale Of Two Bills

It’s standard practice in Hawaii for both the House and the Senate to propose separate bills on important issues. These bills are heard in committees and voted on in their originating chamber before “crossing over” to the other chamber.

If the receiving chamber doesn’t agree to the bill exactly as written, it will typically go to “conference committee,” where representatives from both the House and the Senate try to reach an agreement. If they do, the bill passes. If not, it dies.

The 2022 legislative session began with both the Senate and the House proposing phased-in increases to a $18 minimum wage. The Senate introduced a bill — Senate Bill 2018 — that reached $18 by 2026, while the House’s bill — House Bill 2510 — proposed $18 by 2030.

The Senate bill made it through the chamber in record time, arriving at the House extraordinarily early in the session on Jan. 28.

The House never scheduled it for a hearing.

Instead, the House amended its own bill (HB 2510 HD2) to reach $18 by 2028. This put the House bill two years closer to the Senate’s preference of full implementation by 2026.

Yet the bill also included an increase in the amount of money that is taken out of tipped workers’ wages, a practice known as the “tip credit.”

When the House bill crossed over to the Senate, the Senate amended the bill (HB 2510 SD1) to reach $18 by 2026. The Senate also eliminated the “tip credit” entirely by 2026, a move that pleased progressives, but arguably made it more difficult to reach a compromise.

Now, with just a week left to pass the bill, the House either needs to accept what the Senate sent over, or the bill needs to go to conference committee.

The House has already said it disagrees with the bill and has appointed “conferees” — the representatives from the House side that will negotiate on the bill. As of this writing, the Senate has yet to appoint its own conferees, a highly unusual move this late in the game on such a high-profile issue.

At this point, there are only a few options remaining: 1) the House can pass the bill as amended by the Senate; 2) the Senate can appoint conferees and they can start working on a compromise; 3) both chambers can see who flinches first as they wait until the clock runs out.

The stakes are particularly high because another important policy is unaccountably wrapped up in all of this.
The Earned Income Tax Credit — a tax break for working families that helps more than 60,000 Hawaii households — will expire at the end of the year if the Legislature doesn’t take action.

Even though the Senate and the House advanced similar proposals to expand and extend the EITC — the House says the EITC should be permanent, but the Senate wants to extend it by just six years — there’s disagreement about which bill should accomplish this. The legislative vehicle is now House Bill 510, a bill that was originally introduced as a refundable tax credit for automobile registration fees, but it, too, is being held hostage as part of this larger battle.

To our legislative leaders, I’ll be blunt: Please do your job.

Sadly, the possibility that both bills will crash and burn despite strong support from most policymakers and residents is all too real. In 2019, a bill to increase the minimum wage made it to a conference committee, but died after the two chambers were unable to come to an agreement.

Here’s where things stand now: The House, but not the Senate, has appointed conferees on the minimum wage bill. And the Senate, but not the House, has appointed conferees on the EITC bill. Both chambers support each bill’s substantive goals, but neither the House nor the Senate seem inclined to compromise.

I understand that the House and Senate in every Legislature are frequently at loggerheads. The minimum wage and the EITC are complex and contentious policies.

But this is absurd.

To our legislative leaders, I’ll be blunt: Please do your job. Find a way to compromise with your colleagues and pass these bills. Don’t make working families pay the price for legislative gamesmanship.