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Legislative Priorities: 2025 Session

OPENING 2025

The 2025 Legislative Session opened on January 15 with the Legislature and Governor focusing on addressing the effects of the housing crisis, fireworks, insurance, and invasive species. There were 3,172 total measures introduced this year, which is 496 more measures introduced than the 2024 Legislative Session. The GCA Legislative Committee met on Tuesday, January 28th, to review 195 measures that were identified to affect the industry. The Committee focused on opposing efforts attempting to raise the cost of construction, supporting/opposing various procurement code amendments, and supporting state construction initiatives.

Please find a list of those measures here.

The GCA Legislative Committee identified several measures that will have a significant impact on the industry. These measures include:

HB 420 / SB 179:
Clarifies the applicability of the statute of repose for actions arising from construction defects. Clarifies the required contents of a notice of claim of construction defect served on a contractor. Amends the process and time frame for a claimant to accept a contractor's offer to settle or inspect and authorize the contractor to proceed with repairs. Limits the amount a claimant can recover if the claimant rejects a contractor's reasonable proposal for inspection or a reasonable offer to remedy. Clarifies the consequences of rejecting an offer of settlement.

Position: Support
This measure will help to prevent frivolous lawsuits by increasing the opportunity for homebuilders and homeowners to address any potential construction defects without costly litigation. Specifically, this measure will:

  1. Provide better notice or detail of alleged defect;
  2. Require evidence of any alleged defect;
  3. Amend the process and timeframe for inspection; and
  4. Limit recovery to the cost of mitigating the defect and attorney’s fees when a proposal to Inspect or an offer to repair is unreasonably rejected.

HB 808:
Requires public contractors to obtain insurance to cover at least half of a project's construction costs to the State to provide funds for curing construction defects discovered within ten years after the completion of the contract. Authorizes the State to institute an action against the contractor for the total costs of curing those defects.

Position: Oppose
First, general liability insurance for “construction defects” is not currently commercially available now and is unlikely to be readily available soon.  Second, the cost to have project specific general liability coverage with limits at 50% of project value that has a “completed operations” coverage period of 10 years will be extremely expensive.  This will have the effect of raising the cost of construction, especially for the State and taxpayers.

SB 131:
Requires the Procurement Policy Board to adopt rules requiring contracts to impose mandatory fines or provide for termination of a contract for default if a contractor fails to perform the contractor's duties or if there is a major delay in a deliverable. Requires each contract to establish a schedule of deliverables and to specify what constitutes a "major delay".

Position: Oppose
The GCA has concerns with this measure as there are already remedies to pursue for failure of duties and delay, including liquidated damages. If the purpose of this is to go after bad actors, then there are provisions that allow for debarment.

Further, deliverables can be complex and there are concerns with defining what constitutes a “major delay.”

SB 1175:
Adds state contractor's performance assessment to information required to be included in the past performance database maintained by the State Procurement Office.

Position: Oppose
In 2023, the Procurement Policy Board underwent rulemaking to establish a past performance assessment form. After numerous hearings, the Board determined that the past performance assessment form should be as simple and objective as possible as many issues arose during rulemaking.

This exact language was proposed by the State Procurement Office to the Procurement Policy Board for consideration and was rejected by the board over subjectivity concerns. This measure seeks to force the Procurement Policy Board to include information that they specifically intended to keep out of the assessment form after numerous hearings.

The Legislative Committee will continue to meet around the various legislative deadlines to review and comment on the measures moving throughout the Legislature.

Also, the Contractors License Board has been looking to amend the definition of “incidental and supplemental” in the Hawaii Administrative Rules, section 16-77-34.  Proposed amendments here. The GCA Board will be voting to adopt or amend these proposed rules to go through rulemaking.

Go to the:
2024 Session
2023 Session
2022 Session
2021 Session

Interested in finding out more about the GCA Legislative Committee: click here. 
GCA Members, interested in joining? Contact Gladys at info@gcahawaii.org.