Every year, around 3,000 bills are introduced in the Hawaiʻi State Legislature. By the time the session ends in early May, only about 220 make it to the Governor's desk. That's a survival rate of roughly 7%.
Most people assume bills die because they get voted down. The reality is more complicated; the vast majority of bills never get a vote at all. Let’s walk through how that happens.
Scheduling decisions can kill bills
The committee chair decides which bills get heard
When a bill is introduced, it gets assigned to one or more committees. What happens next is largely up to the committee chair — a single legislator who decides whether to schedule a hearing. No hearing means no vote, no debate, and no public record of opposition. The bill simply disappears.
Chairs are supposed to act as filters, blocking bills that aren't ready or don't have enough support. But it also means one person can quietly kill a bill they personally oppose (or one that conflicts with a powerful interest) without ever having to say so.
In practice, roughly 60% of bills introduced never receive a hearing.
Multiple committees multiply the risk
Many bills are assigned to more than one committee (sometimes three) and each one is a separate hurdle. A bill can clear two committees and die in the third, with no partial credit.
This happens often for bills that cross policy areas: a bill dealing with both healthcare and state spending, for example, might go through a health committee and then a finance committee. Clearing the first doesn't guarantee anything about the second.
Decking
Every bill starts in one chamber, House or Senate, and starts in one committee of that chamber. Once all committees in the originating chamber have passed the bill, usually with amendments, the full chamber needs to pass the bill. Only then can the second chamber take up the bill.
Decking is the term for scheduling this vote. If the chamber leadership does not deck the bill, it dies.
Leadership sets the agenda
Committee chairs don't act in isolation. House and Senate leadership (the Speaker and the Senate President) have significant influence over which bills move and which ones stall. A bill opposed by leadership may never get scheduled regardless of how many co-sponsors it has.
Bills can also be held strategically: a chair or leader may keep a bill alive as a bargaining chip, then let it die once it's no longer useful. This kind of maneuvering rarely shows up in the official record.
Two chambers, two versions
Companion bills
Most bills start with two versions, called companion bills, one of which is submitted in the House and one in the Senate. This can accelerate the process, in that both chambers consider versions early. In practice, the two versions get amended separately. When this happens, unless the respective committee chairs from House and Senate agree which version to carry forward, both versions die.
Crossover
Crossover refers to the two points where the chambers swap the bills that are still under consideration. Bills that have passed a floor vote in the House are considered in the Senate and vice-versa. At crossover, the entire process happens again in the second chamber. A bill can die because the second chamber’s committee does not hear it or pass it.
Conference committees
The majority of bills leave their committee hearings with amendments. After all, that’s how they get improved. Conference committees have the job of reconciling the differences of two versions and any amendments. Each chamber’s leadership picks conferees for each bill. If the leadership does not assign a conference committee, the bill dies. If the conferees cannot agree on a single version, the bill dies.
Once the conference committee passes a single version for both chambers, the conference committee files it for floor votes in both chambers. If either chamber fails to pass the bill, it dies.
Lack of funding can kill bills
Even a bill with broad support can die if it costs money that just isn't there. In Hawaiʻi, that means surviving the House Finance Committee (FIN) and the Senate Ways and Means Committee (WAM), which control the budget and have enormous power to kill bills (even popular ones) simply by not including them in the spending plan. A bill that passes every other committee but fails to get funded is still a dead bill.
A tight calendar with hard deadlines
The session runs for approximately 60 legislative days, from mid-January to early May, with hard deadlines built into the schedule. Once First Crossover hits in mid-March, bills have roughly six weeks to clear the second chamber, survive a possible Conference Committee, and reach the Governor. Miss a deadline by a day and the bill is done for the session.
This creates a bottleneck effect as the session progresses: fewer days, more bills competing for committee time, and bills that aren't a leadership priority getting pushed aside as the calendar tightens.
Finally, the Governor can veto
Every bill that passes the gauntlet of the legislature goes to the Governor. After the legislature adjourns, the Governor has 45 days for review.
- If the Governor signs the bill, it becomes law
- If the Governor vetoes the bill, it dies
- If the Governor neither signs nor vetoes, and the 45 days pass, the bill becomes law.
How to use this information
Knowing how bills die helps us know where to apply pressure — and when. The hearing stage is the most critical window: if a bill we track has been assigned to committee but hasn't been scheduled, that's the moment to act. Contacting the committee chair, mobilizing constituent testimony, and showing up to hearings can all make a difference. Once a bill misses a deadline, there's nothing left to do until the next session.
Following a bill’s status isn’t just about watching whether it passed or failed. Our Public Policy team keeps an eye on it through every stage , from introduction to passage on the floor of each chamber. We track whether a hearing has been scheduled, and how much time is left before the next deadline; we then send alerts when there’s a specific action to take.
→ Join the Public Policy Action Group if you’d like to receive those alerts, and help influence public policy during the legislative session
→ For a full breakdown of how the legislative process works, see How a bill becomes law in Hawaiʻi.
→ Sign up for our newsletter to hear when taking action really matters