A number of potentially important bills concerning electric vehicles are up for consideration in Hawaii’s new legislative session — including one possibly repealing electric vehicle exemption from parking fees, and one establishing fines for parking facility owners (owners of facilities comprising over 100 parking spots) without at least one charging-spot-equipped parking space.
You can check out more information on those two bills — HB 1546 and SB99 — if you’re inclined to look at the legal details. (Thanks to “nanimac” on the Tesla Motors Club forum for these.)
With regard to HB 1546, the recent discussion on the Tesla Motors Club forum also included a comment from “gmtom1” noting that “HB1546, which would repeal the free parking we all enjoy, was deferred by the transportation committee at today’s hearing. Don’t know if it will be heard again, but that’s good news for EV owners, since we don’t want this measure to move forward. 🙂 This bill was carried over from last session, so if it doesn’t move in this session, it’s dead until next year.”
“gmtom1” left another comment as well, providing an update: “SB2515, which is the bill that adds enforcement and penalties to the EV charger parking requirement, has passed out of Transportation & Energy and moved on to Ways and Means. It was amended in the committee to add an additional requirement: Places of public accommodation with at least one hundred parking spaces available for use by the general public shall have at least one parking space per one hundred spaces by July 1, 2017, and two parking spaces per one hundred spaces by July 1, 2022.”
Good news. Though, the commenter did also note that the enforcement provisions for the requirement were fairly weak, and also that the bill had been made intentionally “defective” by “making the effective date of the bill to July 1, 2050. Legislators will often do this to appease constituents, but ultimately will prevent the provisions of the bill from becoming law even if it makes it to the floor for a vote.”