Wage measures still alive

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Gavin Thornton of the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice testified that the bill doesn’t do enough to help Hawaiʻi’s wage earners.

“I don’t understand how it is that we can value people and their work so little that, at minimum, we can’t pay people who are working 40 hours a week enough to meet their most basic needs,” Thornton said. “… People have been waiting four years for a minimum wage increase; they’ve been waiting decades for an income that’s sufficient to live on. For the past four years, inflation has eaten away at what minimum wage workers are earning. They’re effectively earning $2,000 less today than they were in 2018.”

Nicole Woo, of the Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network, testified a provision in the bill would unintentionally eliminate tax credits to working parents paying for child care.

“Currently, the tax credit is up to $2,400 for a single parent or $4,800 per couple, and it provides a credit of between 15 percent and 25 percent of their child-care costs,” Woo said. “We have some of the most expensive child-care costs in the nation, so we are really flummoxed and don’t understand why a bill that’s supposed to be helping families actually would raise taxes on a whole bunch of them.”

Woo urged the committee to either amend or defer the bill, which she said contains “too many flaws.”