Hawaii's historic move to undo Citizens United is close to passing the legislature; there's still work to do to make it better.

Senate Bill 2471, which would make Citizens United irrelevant in Hawaii and get all dark and corporate money out of the state's politics, is achingly close to passage. It cleared its conference committee late last week and the final round of amendments will be voted on tomorrow (Wednesday, May 6).

The House and Senate caucuses meet today (Tuesday) to discuss what the floor amendments will be. There is one floor amendment that has been agreed upon: They're going to push the effective date from Jan. 1, 2027, to July 1, 2027. (That seems fine.)

The amendments are then introduced and voted on tomorrow. Both houses have to agree to the same amendments or the bill dies (this is possible, but not expected). The bill then sits for two days and there's a final vote on it in each chamber, as amended, on Friday.

Then the bill is off to Gov. Green for his signature.

There's action to be taken now, if you like: At the final moment, the conference committee added an unfortunate and badly crafted amendment to the bill that gives the attorney general unilateral power to erase the law from the books altogether if she believes a part of it is unenforceable. This should come out.

The person who will decide whether it stays or goes is Rep. Scot Matayoshi. His email is [repmatayoshi@capitol.hawaii.gov](mailto:repmatayoshi@capitol.hawaii.gov); his office number is 808-586-8470. It's an easy ask: "Please kill the Attorney General kill switch in SB 2471."

Let's be polite about it—Rep. Matayoshi had that provision added out of a sincere concern about how courts might treat out-of-state corporations differently from Hawaii corporations. But the language that was added doesn't do the job, and it weakens the stability (though not the effect) of the bill.

Even if the kill switch stays in, SB 2471 is well worth supporting. The kill switch makes a great bill a little less steady, but it's still a great bill.