The 2017 Legislative Session has been a very active and unusual one! For the first time in recent memory two committee chairs switched places in the middle of session. This created confusion for advocacy groups who had previously met will all chairs assigned to their bills at the start of session. Rep. Angus McKelvey was moved from the chair of Consumer Protection and Commerce (CPC) Committee to become chair of Higher Education Committee. Meanwhile, Rep. Roy Takumi was moved from chair of Education Committee to chair of CPC Committee. CPC Committee is an important committee for the food industry. Many bills relating to regulating products, banning products, regulating business practices, signage, labor, and other standards go through CPC Committee. On the last day of session two other major changes happened. The Speaker of the House, Rep. Joe Souki, resigned his position and was replaced by Rep. Scott Saiki, and the chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the Senate, Sen. Jill Tokuda, was replaced by Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz.
Although the session had many curve balls HFIA faired well. All but one of the bills we opposed died, and even that bill was amended to be more favorable. On an even more positive note, a few of the projects we supported, and our members directly benefit from, received funding in the budget! We expect next year to be another challenging session, with many of the “dead” bills from 2017 coming to “life” again! Below is an overview of some the big issues we testified on this year.