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Please email govtaffairs@hawaiirealtors.com for consent consideration.

First Crossover Deadline

Bills that passed their originating chamber have been sent over to the other chamber and assigned to committees for hearings. Due to this critical deadline, hearing activity was relatively slow this week. The Legislative Committee anticipates that numerous hearings will be scheduled in the following two weeks to meet the Second Lateral deadline on March 24th.

Call-to-Action

On the Senate Floor, SB 1366, which proposes to increase the general and use tax to 5% was recommitted to the Senate Committee on Ways and Means. Essentially, this bill is no longer considered for passage this year. However, a bill still alive is HB 1309, which would allow counties to levy a 1% surcharge on top of the State tax of 4%. This will allow the counties to decide if they wish to add a surcharge up to 1% for the residents of that county.

The Hawaii Association of REALTORS® may transmit another Call-to-Action requesting its members to take action on the general excise tax bills once again. Your personal grassroots efforts truly made a difference on an issue of importance to REALTORS.

Crossover Bills  

The Hawaii Association of REALTORS has posted some bills that have made the crossover deadline. Please feel free to view the document: Crossover Bills

To view any of the bill text and testimonies submitted by the HAR, visit http://www.hawaiirealtors.com/government_affairs/LA/testimonies.asp.

More details on specific bills will be provided in future Government Affairs Weekly

If you have any questions or comments that you would like forwarded to the Legislative Committee, please call 733-7060 or 1-888-737-9070 or by e-mail at govtaffairs@hawaiirealtors.com.