State senators have declined to move forward with a statewide ban on all fireworks, and instead are working to significantly strengthen law enforcement’s ability to investigate and prosecute fireworks cases.
Within the last week, measures to increase fireworks penalties, boost funding for investigations and allow for the random inspection of containers at the ports have all cleared their initial hurdles in the Senate.
Together, the measures represent the most significant steps to crack down on illegal fireworks that legislators have taken in more than two decades. Over those years, a series of reports outlined steps that lawmakers, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors could take to curtail fireworks in Hawaiʻi, but those recommendations were rarely acted on.
The moves this week in the Senate show how dramatically the politics of policing fireworks changed after an explosion at a neighborh