State lawmakers representing the neighbor islands have pushed a handful of bills addressing longstanding housing, health care and environmental issues through the critical crossover point of the current legislative session.
As often happens, much of the legislation that would primarily benefit Maui, Kauaʻi and Hawaiʻi counties failed to meet last week’s deadlines for measures to pass from the House to the Senate and vice versa for further work over the next several weeks.
Among the survivors, however, is House Bill 2424. While wonky on the surface, it could pave the way for more housing in rural areas to help ease the dire shortage faced by all the neighbor islands. It lets the counties petition the state Land Use Commission to reclassify land in agricultural districts as rural so long as the land is subdivided into plots no larger than 2 acres.
Hawaiʻi island Rep. Matthias Kusch co-introduced a bill now moving forward in the Legislature to make it easier for residents to continue farming in rural areas and keep property taxes low, while allowing them to build additional homes without going through a rezoning process. (Craig Fujii/Civil Beat/2026)
Heather Kimball, a Hawai‘i County Council member and president of the Hawai‘i State Association of Counties, said that gives people the chance to build multi-generational family housing on their own properties without the county or the state having to build it all.
That legislation stood out as a rare neighbor island priority to make it through this year’s halfway point. County officials from Maui, Hawai‘i and Kauaʻi have advocated for various bills, but even with the Senate president and House speaker both representing the Garden Isle, the chances of passage for most measures remain slim.
Of those still moving forward, several related to housing, health and the environment could have significant impacts for the neighbor islands.
Housing: Rezoning And Conveyance Tax Changes
Under HB 2424, which gets its first hearing in the Senate on Thursday, counties would still need to conduct public hearings and notify landowners before seeking a land use change. They would also need to submit petitions before 2029.
Many areas were zoned for agriculture when the state land use law was adopted in 1961. Large swaths of land without urban development were given a blanket designation of conservation or agriculture, Kimball said.
“However, there’s a lot of areas that would probably be more accurately designated as rural, some of the smaller, more residential communities,” she said.
She and Hawai‘i island Rep. Matthias Kusch said communities such as Hawaiian Paradise Park, Kohala, South Kona and plantation communities on the Hāmākua coast, while zoned for agriculture, are rarely farmed. The plots are small, and Kusch said they aren’t capable of contributing to commercial food production.
While Hāmākua Coast is largely zoned for agriculture, much of the land is not actively being farmed. (Nathan Eagle/Civil Beat/2023)
A rural designation would allow residents to continue subsistence farming and keep property taxes low while allowing them to build additional homes without being subjected to a rezoning process.
Another housing bill that neighbor island lawmakers are pushing would restructure the conveyance tax. House Bill 2049 has received support from two neighbor island council members, Tamara Paltin of Maui and Addison Bulosan of Kaua‘i. Most homes would see a decrease or no change, but homes valued over $2.2 million would see an increase.
Some of the revenue generated by this tax — about $60 million in the current version — would be dedicated annually to the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, giving the department its first dedicated annual revenue source, said Kaua‘i Rep. Luke Evslin, the bill’s main introducer.
He added that funding will help DHHL provide infrastructure for 1,000 lots in Līhu‘e alone. In February, Grove Farm sold the department about 260 acres mauka of Isenberg Park. DHHL testified that the $60 million per year could help it deliver more than 8,000 lots around the state by 2039.
Health: Emergency Response And Prescribing Powers
It’s no surprise that health is once again a prevailing priority for the neighbor islands, given that they bear the brunt of Hawai‘i’s physician shortage and have limited access to specialized and emergency services.
This session aims to help alleviate some of those challenges with a proposed $4.5 million to keep up with pay increases for the Maui and Kaua‘i contracts with American Medical Response for emergency ground ambulance services and $81.1 million for healthcare facilities on Hawai‘i island and Kaua‘i.
In the same vein, Senate lawmakers unanimously passed Senate Bill 2934 earlier this month to provide funding for the state Department of Health to buy and staff one ground ambulance for Central Maui.
Central Maui has experienced significant population growth and increased demand for emergency medical services. The Emergency Medical Services & Injury Prevention Systems Branch 9 testified that over 5,342 of the 15,790 total 911 EMS responses across Maui County in 2025 were from Central Maui.
A Senate bill aims to create a pilot program granting qualified psychologists limited authority to prescribe psychotropic medicines. (Kevin Fujii/Civil Beat/2024)
A separate measure, Senate Bill 847, would create a three-year pilot program on Kaua‘i to give licensed psychologists with psychopharmacological training limited authority to prescribe psychotropic medications. If the pilot is successful, it’s possible that prescribing authority would be expanded to psychologists on other islands. Similar authority has been granted in seven states.
David Peters, CEO of Ho‘ōla Lāhui Hawai‘i, said the center’s psychologist doesn’t qualify for the program since she doesn’t have training in psychopharmacology, but he hopes the center would be able to contract with a psychologist who does to carry out the pilot. He plans to work closely with the center’s partner, the Hawai‘i Health Systems Corp., which already provides some psychiatric support. Two of Ho‘ōla Lāhui Hawai‘i’s clinics are located in state-funded HHSC facilities.
“There are many people that would benefit from this type of intervention,” he said.
The center also has a part-time psychiatric advanced practice registered nurse who works closely with the psychologist and primary care physicians. That nurse works three days a week and in 2025 saw 104 patients over 699 visits.
The bill was originally drafted to apply statewide, but the Senate Committee on Commerce and Consumer Affairs narrowed its focus to Kaua‘i last month. Kaua‘i has the largest shortage of all the counties for adult psychiatrists at 69%, according to the latest Hawai‘i Physician Workforce Report. Hawai‘i County is close behind, with a 67% shortage, followed by Maui County at 45% and O‘ahu at 28%.
Christopher Knightsbridge, who heads the mental health research team for the University of Hawaiʻi’s Maui Wildfire Exposure Study, said healthcare providers across the state have been pushing to pass similar legislation for decades, and he was disappointed by lawmakers’ decision to amend it so that a pilot program would only be established on Kauaʻi.
“Maui desperately needs it,” he said.
Maui and Hawaiʻi counties have larger gaps in child/adolescent psychiatrists, according to the 2025 Hawai‘i Physician Workforce Report. The report acknowledges that the Maui wildfires amplified an existing shortage of providers and eliminated multiple healthcare facilities which have not been rebuilt, so the estimated gap is likely worse than the findings suggest.
Knightsbridge also advocated for a bill to fund an expansion of the MauiWES study, which has led research into the immediate and ongoing health effects of the wildfires and connected fire-affected residents with mental and physical health care. The additional funding would be used to continue providing existing services, ensure long-term follow-up care for all participants and expand services for children, first responders, kūpuna and medically vulnerable residents, according to the bill. That measure died in committee last week.
Environment: Cesspools And Invasive Species
Evslin, one of Kauaʻi’s four state lawmakers, is taking up the perennial cesspool issue while trying to balance the need for new housing. Of the state’s 83,000 cesspools, most are on the neighbor islands. About 50,000 are on Hawai‘i island, almost 14,000 on Kaua‘i, over 12,000 on Maui and over 1,400 on Moloka‘i.
House Bill 1921 would allow existing homes with Priority 3 cesspools, which are generally not close to shorelines or other water resources, to add additional bedrooms, so long as the number of bedrooms the cesspool serves doesn’t exceed five.
The bill came out of a fall 2024 cesspool town hall Evslin co-hosted with the Kaua‘i House delegation. He and his colleagues heard from a constituent who lives mauka but his kids can’t move home because they’re not able to expand their homes while their house is served by a cesspool.
Priority level 3 cesspools are depicted in yellow and are generally located in areas where water quality won’t be impacted. (UH Sea Grant/2026)
“This is just to give landowners a little more flexibility because the conversion date isn’t until 2050,” House Speaker Nadine Nakamura said, referring to the deadline for homeowners statewide to get off cesspools.
Evslin said targeting Priority 3 cesspools provides strong enough guardrails to ensure these home expansions are only occurring in places where water quality won’t be impacted.
Not all agree those guardrails are strong enough. Frederick Smith, who lives in Ka‘awaloa (Captain Cook) on Hawaiʻi island, would stand to benefit from the bill but testified against it.
“Many Priority 3 areas in Hawai’i County are adjacent to coral reefs that are already highly impaired from cesspools, so there is no reason to make the problem worse,” he told lawmakers.
Another major cesspool bill, House Bill 1618, would create a low-interest loan program for cesspool conversions. In 2022, the state created a $5 million reimbursable grant program that offered low- and moderate-income property owners up to $20,000 each for cesspool removals. Kaua‘i County also ran a grant program that provided 100 homeowners with loans and grants up to $20,000. Currently, 80 out of 100 septic systems are completed, and the county’s housing agency is seeking state funding to do a second round.
When it comes to invasive species, a House bill allowing the use and sale of certain monofilament netting to protect plants against coconut rhinoceros beetles and other pests is already set to be heard by a Senate committee Wednesday. Kaua‘i has struggled to keep CRB from spreading, and Big Island farmers have worried that the Queensland longhorn beetle could spread to the rest of the state.
A coconut rhinoceros beetle was found in a felled coconut tree at Kaiaka Bay Beach Park in Hale‘iwa. (Kevin Fujii/Civil Beat/2024)
Senate President Ron Kouchi said he thinks the most important priority when it comes to dealing with invasive species is making sure the department does its job correctly. Last session, the Legislature allocated $26.6 million and 44 new positions for the recently renamed Department of Biosecurity and Agriculture. Lawmakers this session have threatened to withdraw the department’s funding over what they view as slow progress.
“Throwing more money at them while they have policies that allow the invasive species in won’t be a productive use of the money. We need to get them to start doing the job right first,” he said.
One of Nakamura’s priorities is House Bill 2218, which would give the state Department of Land and Natural Resources the ability to approve co-management agreements. The bill came out of the work at Hā‘ena State Park, where a group of lineal descendants work with the state to oversee the visitor access system.
“It’ll benefit Hā‘ena for sure but also so many other communities around the state, which is what is very exciting,” Nakamura said. The measure crossed over to the Senate last week.
Civil Beat’s reporting on Kauaʻi is supported in part by a grant from the G. N. Wilcox Trust; coverage of environmental issues on Hawaiʻi island is supported in part by a grant from the Dorrance Family Foundation; and coverage of climate change and the environment is supported by The Healy Foundation, the Marisla Fund of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.
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