House lawmakers moved forward with a bill Wednesday to impose a new fee on electricity ratepayers to help the utility pay for a wildfire prevention program that will likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Senate Bill 2922 was introduced at the request of Hawaiian Electric Co., and HECO Chief Operations Officer Jim Alberts told the House Finance Committee Tuesday the fee would be capped at 5% of consumers’ monthly bills.

The fee would be used to make improvements to prevent future fires, and the state Public Utilities Commission would oversee the mitigation plan and the spending plan.

HECO also initially proposed that some of the money from the fee be used to pay for damages from the Aug. 8 fire that destroyed much of Lahaina. However, lawmakers so far have rejected that idea.

Rep. Darius Kila, who represents Nanakuli and Maili, told his colleagues Wednesday that the PUC needs to ensure the fee has “little to no impact on folks, but it allows the utility company to really fortify their grid, and help fire-prone areas like my district.”

“For far too long I think they’ve had to operate without support, and they are a local company, and I do struggle to some extent to see ratepayers will be affected across the state, but if this is what it takes to move forward, I think this is in good faith,” Kila said.

Maui Rep. Elle Cochran protested that some 1,100 written testimonies from Maui residents opposed to the bill were delivered to the committee staff before the Tuesday hearing on the bill, but for some reason did not appear online along with other testimony.

Finance Committee Chair Kyle Yamashita replied that “the way the process works is, and it’s always worked this way, is you have to insert it online to have testimony inserted into the process. So, that’s the process that we’ve been following for the past several years.”

But Cochran still objected, saying “the people of Lahaina, those 1,100 survivors’ voices really need to be accounted for and taken into consideration in this decision, and heard.”

She added: “I really feel like they got slighted, and it hurts.”

The House Finance Committee approved SB 2922 in a 13-1 vote Wednesday, with only Cochran voting no. Republican Reps. Gene Ward and David Alcos were absent for the vote.

The committee also voted to approve Senate Bill 3344, which would create a pool of as much as $1 billion that would be used to pay for damages from future fires.

Some of the money from the proposed new fee on utility bills would be used to finance HECO’s contribution to that pool. Other potential contributors to that fund would be the state, the counties, major landowners and other utilities.

Both bills now go to the full House for further consideration. If they are approved by the House, they will advance to conference committee meetings later this month to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions of the bills.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.