The following “Island Voices” commentary was first published on Feb. 26, 2026, in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser under the headline “With lawmaker will, there are ways to implement tax cuts.”
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By Joe Kent and Jonathan Helton
Hawaii lawmakers are considering bills that would put an end to the phase in of the historic state income tax cuts that the Legislature unanimously passed in 2024.
These bills, HB2306 and SB3125, would effectively be a $1.8 billion dollar tax hike on residents who are already struggling to afford basic necessities.
Gov. Josh Green and other advocates of the bills claim that the state needs the money to offset federal funding cuts (“Protecting Hawaii’s future demands pause on tax cuts,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Feb. 15, 2026). But there are many other ways the governor and Legislature could balance the state budget that would not involve increasing our taxes.
For example, the state could reallocate several hundred million dollars a year by abolishing some or all of its vacant jobs. According to Grassroot Institute of Hawaii research, about $350 million is earmarked for the state’s 4,273 vacant, non-Department of Education jobs, nearly 10% of which have not been filled for at least four years.
To be clear, abolishing vacant jobs would not affect current state workers. It would merely right-size the number of positions in state government while freeing up resources for other uses.
Another avenue to state budget savings would be to reduce all general fund programs to the levels they were at before the COVID-19 crisis, then adjust their budgets for inflation. According to Grassroot research, this would save more than $120 million a year.
Programs that received massive spikes in funding during and after the crisis include the state Office of Enterprise Technology Services at $33.6 million; the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts at $13.5 million; and the Strategic Marketing and Support Division of the Department of Budget, Economic Development and Tourism at $5 million.
Yet another way to ease the burden on Hawaii taxpayers would be for the Legislature to ditch its prospective spending on mega projects such as the new Aloha Stadium.
So far, the state has allocated $400 million in tax dollars toward the project, but it’s anyone’s guess as to what that amount will be by the time the stadium is complete. Already, its construction has been delayed several years and its latest total price tag of $650 million doesn’t account for the most recent set of plans that indicate the stadium’s seating will be increased by 40% compared to the current official expectations.
Lawmakers could also zero out the millions of dollars sitting idle in various special, revolving and trust funds. At least $100 million is sitting in funds that the Office of the Auditor has identified as needing to be abolished or reclassified.
Admittedly, this would comprise only a one-time infusion of cash into the state budget, but it would help the state get through at least the first of the next several years in good shape.
Last but not least, legislators could immediately save money by repealing programs that simply should not be the government’s responsibility to run.
For example, the state could save almost $70 million a year by eliminating the often-troubled Hawaii Tourism Authority, an organization that spends taxpayer money to lure potential visitors to the islands, which is something the tourism industry could be paying for on its own.
As a practical matter, the HTA is not even meeting its own goals. A 2025 audit pointed out that the agency failed to report on its key performance metrics for several years running. When the state Office of Auditor ran the numbers itself, it discovered HTA hadn’t met those metrics anyway.
So as you can see, the question is not whether lawmakers can find cuts to balance the budget. It’s whether they can make the hard choices necessary to save our much-needed tax cuts.
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Joe Kent is the executive vice president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Jonathan Helton is a policy analyst at the institute.
