A key Senate committee on Wednesday advanced several bills to pump more state money into the Maui wildfire recovery effort and to try to prevent similar disasters in the future.

However, Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz said that Gov. Josh Green’s administration still has not presented a clear plan to the Legislature for moving families who were displaced by the Aug. 8 wildfire fire out of hotels and into less expensive shelter arrangements.

Dela Cruz raised that as a particular concern, warning that the Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for shelter for those families may end in June.

“If non-congregate sheltering continues beyond June, it seems the state will have to cover 100% of the cost for FEMA-ineligible households if families are not transitioned to temporary and permanent housing options,” he said.

The state signed a $500 million contract with the Red Cross to provide shelter, meals and other support services for people displaced by the fires, a deal that is costing $1,000 per day per family for people staying in West Maui hotels.

The state must pay that money up front and then seek reimbursement from FEMA, a process that sometimes takes years. Even more troubling, the state initially expected FEMA would pay 90% of the costs under the Red Cross contract, but FEMA has so far declined to pay many of those costs.

Negotiations are ongoing over which families the state must pay for, and which families are eligible for federal support. Senators were told on Feb. 20 that 820 households had been deemed ineligible for federal support, and then told on Feb. 29 that number had dropped to 659 families. 

More recently, staff for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said on March 4 the number of ineligible families stood at 555, but described that as a snapshot in time. According to HIEMA, the ineligible families and individuals include undocumented noncitizens and people who were homeless before the fire.

Dela Cruz said Wednesday the Red Cross contract had consumed the full $500 million by the end of February, while the state initially had expected its total share of the contract would be $50 million.

The extra sheltering costs are driving much of the state’s unexpected expenses in connection with the fire, making it all the more urgent that the state find housing alternatives for people who remain stuck in the hotels.

Dela Cruz said Wednesday he separated the administration’s requests for wildfire recovery funds into separate bills in an effort to make the cash flow more transparent.

A new draft of House Bill 679 approved by the Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday includes the emergency appropriations to cover the unanticipated wildfire-related costs for the fiscal year that ends June 30.

The administration initially used about $200 million in cash that Green redirected from various programs and projects into the Major Disaster Fund to pay for the response to the fire, and the new draft of HB 679 would provide another $297 million for food, shelter and support services for families displaced by the fire.

That same bill also includes $65 million as the state’s share of the One Ohana Bank Trust Account to compensate survivors of those killed in the fire or those who were seriously injured. At least 101 people died in the wildfire, and the state has been named in more than 70 lawsuits in connection with the disaster.

Green set up the One Ohana program to quickly resolve at least some of those cases by paying compensation of up to $1.5 million for each fatality. Other contributors to the fund include Hawaiian Electric Co., Kamehameha Schools, Hawaiian Telcom, West Maui Land Co. and Charter Communications.

The committee also approved House Bill 2610 on Wednesday to provide recovery funding the Green administration has requested for the fiscal year that begins July 1. That state and federal funding for next year totals $452.9 million.

Included in that amount is money for an additional 20 HIEMA employees to work on the wildfire recovery effort, and $10 million to purchase fire and emergency equipment.

Another $63.5 million is earmarked in the bill for Maui County to help fund the county’s recovery efforts, and another $115 million is appropriated in the bill for temporary and modular housing on Maui.

The bill also commits an unspecified amount of money to a special fund that would be used to pay for the state or local share of fire mitigation grants to try to prevent wildfires in the future.

The bill approved Wednesday leaves the amount of state funding for those mitigation grants blank, but the original bill proposed earmarking $25 million for that initiative.

The Ways and Means Committee also advanced a proposed $19 billion supplemental budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, a document that will be the subject of extensive negotiations between the House and Senate in the month ahead.

Dela Cruz said in a written statement that the Senate “continues to prioritize investments that safeguard our island home and diversify our economy and workforce to reverse the brain drain.”

“The Senate budget prioritizes diversifying our economy and making strategic investments into our state’s infrastructure to facilitate the development of more affordable housing for our local residents,” he said in his statement.

The proposed Senate budget includes $63 million for the Hawaii Tourism Authority, which lawmakers declined to fund last year. It also includes more than $40 million to support the Hawaii State Hospital and provide community-based services for the mentally ill.

The proposed budget and the wildfire funding measures now move to the full Senate for further consideration.

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