Political sticker shock: Gov. Josh Green is squirming a bit at the much-publicized proposal floated by the state salary commission a couple weeks ago that would boost his salary by more than 61% over the next six years.

He’d be OK with a 35% to 40% pay hike over his current $189,480 annual wage, his chief of staff, Brooke Wilson, told the commission last week.

“Just to cut straight to it — and you know at the end of the day you guys are going to decide, OK? — but his feedback was that he felt more comfortable with a 35% to maximum 40% increase over six years for he and the lieutenant governor,” Wilson said.

Commissioners noted Green’s current salary is less than what the Honolulu mayor makes, which they suggested is inappropriate given Green’s expansive statewide responsibilities. Mayor Rick Blangiardi got a raise last year that boosted his pay to $217,392.

But Wilson told the salary commission that Green doesn’t think he needs to be paid more than the mayor. After all, he has a car, a driver and housing at Washington Place, perks the mayor doesn’t have.

Green, according to Wilson, thinks judges should get a “great increase” in their salaries because competition from the private sector is making it more difficult to attract candidates for judicial appointments.

Still, the commission seems intent on a pretty hefty ramping up of the pay scales for the governor and other state officials — including legislators — despite plenty of public outrage that has followed since The Blog and others reported that whopping increases were on the table.

On Monday commissioners mapped out a tentative schedule for the governor that includes a 32% raise effective July 1, followed by 4% raises for each of the following five years. That still works out to a total of 52%, or nearly 61% over the six years when compounding of the annual raises is taken into account.

Bottom line: The governor’s pay would be $304,301 in 2031. That’s actually a year after Green would be termed out of office if he’s reelected in 2026.

The commission is charged with recommending pay increases for the next six years for the governor, the lieutenant governor, state department heads and deputies, Hawai’i judges, and the Legislature.

Commission members plan to vote on the package of pay raises at their next meeting on Monday. The raises will automatically take effect unless the state House and Senate both vote to reject them in an all-or-nothing deal.

The sun is shining brightly so far: Last week was the Legislature’s first full week of committee hearings and The Blog could hardly keep up with all the sunshine bills that went whizzing through, thanks to the snappy pace set by The Sunshine Boys.

That’s the title our cartoonist Will Caron recently gave to Judiciary chairs Sen. Karl Rhoads and Rep. David Tarnas. The Blog would add Senate Government Operations chair Angus McKelvey to that crew; he’s pulled quite a few accountability bills to his hearing calendar, too.

It’s early yet and of course conference committee is where everything will die, but many of the key reform measures are getting some actual love from lawmakers: more restrictions on contractor and grantee political donations, more money for partial public financing of campaigns, more requirements for lobbyists’ disclosure.

Bill packages requested by the state Ethics Commission, Elections Commission and Campaign Spending Commission — including prohibiting contributions to state elected officials while they’re in session and funding for more investigators — are being heard and largely approved, at least by one chamber or the other.

Even a couple of constitutional amendments that would ultimately need to go to the ballot for approval by voters are getting a legislative thumb’s up (so far): increasing the mandatory retirement age for judges to 75, fixing an issue with blank votes and overvotes in Hawaiʻi’s elections, and an end run around Citizens United by declaring that in Hawaiʻi free speech shouldn’t necessarily mean huge campaign contributions.

Coming up this week, lawmakers are scheduled to take up more bills related to the public financing of campaigns and a serious effort by Rep. Tarnas to curb one aspect of pay-to-play politics by better tracking contractors and grantees who are getting state funding and restricting the money they have been funneling to elected officials. (That’s at 2 p.m. Wednesday in House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs.)

Lawmakers also seem interested in changing the law regarding asset forfeiture to make sure authorities only seize property in criminal cases where someone has been actually convicted, and convicted of a felony. Bills making it clear that the public has the right to record law enforcement officers also are moving forward.

The House Republican caucus’s Stand Your Ground proposal has yet to be scheduled for a hearing.

Bipartisan proposals to ban or restrict cell phone use in schools seem to be going nowhere. The same for bills that would require more voter centers, especially on Oʻahu, to help alleviate long lines for voters who choose to vote in person on Election Day.

The Blog could go on and on about some of the other interesting proposals we’re tracking here. But the Legislature’s website is pretty easy to navigate for bills and hearings and it also has easy links to live video streams or recorded hearings.

We’ll do our best to keep you updated on the issues we’re following. There’s about a month to go til crossover, when bills must be approved in at least one chamber and they cross over to the other one.

Session stretch: A couple of the bills getting some attention this year entertain the notion of putting lawmakers to work year-round — not necessarily every day but spreading the legislative session throughout the year to give policymakers more time to do their jobs in an increasingly complex world.

Count Senate Judiciary chair Karl Rhoads as a loyal skeptic on this one.

He’s giving some air to Senate President Ron Kouchi’s version of a proposal by House Speaker Nadine Nakamura to create a task force to study how the session could be extended over 12 months (now it’s 60 session days spread over about four months). Senate Bill 1514 gets a hearing Friday at 9:25 a.m. before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Nakamura’s House Bill 1425 is set to go Wednesday at 2 p.m. before the House Legislative Management Committee.

“It’s not clear to me that there’s any stomach for extending the session either in the building or amongst voters,” Rhoads told The Blog on Monday.

Rhoads made quick work of another proposal for a 12-month Legislature on Friday when he unilaterally deferred Senate Bill 733, which sought to put the question directly to the voters via a constitutional amendment. His Judiciary Committee colleague, Sen. Stanley Chang, was the lead sponsor on that one, along with a few other senators.

Chang has frequently pushed for an extended legislative session, and has called the current setup “four months of chaos.”

Of course being in charge comes with some privileges. Referring to the Nakamura/Kouchi push for a task force to study the issue, Rhoads said, “since it’s a leadership bill, I think that’s the one that will move if any do.”

Gordon Ito out at DCCA: Rumors have been swirling for some time that former House Speaker Scott Saiki is favored by Gov. Josh Green to be Hawaiʻi’s insurance commissioner. In fact, Saiki now has a job at the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Insurance Division, but not the top spot. Yet.

On Monday, the agency announced that Gordon Ito is retiring from the insurance division after 31 years including 10 total as commissioner. Jerry Bump, who joined the division in 2008, has been named acting director.

Standing up to Trump and Musk: Meanwhile, 5,000 miles away across the continent — and the ocean — Hawaiʻi’s senior senator vowed to place a “blanket hold” on all of Trump’s nominees to the U.S. State Department until the attempt to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development is reversed.

Just last week Sen. Brian Schatz was named ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs.

And today … there he was on the steps of the agency with a handful of other Democratic senators and reps promising to put up a fight to keep the Trump administration from dismantling a vital lifeline from the U.S. to other countries.

“Dismantling USAID is illegal and makes us less safe,” Schatz said. “USAID was created by federal law and is funded by Congress. Donald Trump and Elon Musk can’t just wish it away with a stroke of a pen — they need to pass a law.”

Schatz called the Trump-Musk move “brazenly authoritarian” and “a self-inflicted chaos of epic proportions that will have dangerous consequences all around the world.”

Over the weekend, staffers from the new Department of Government Efficiency took possession of classified information held by the agency and then refused to allow employees in the building on Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A single senator can hold up nominations under the Senate rules.