STAR-BULLETIN / 2004 The state law currently mandates a permit to purchase and set off firecrackers, but no such permit is required for novelty fireworks like these shown for sale.

Resolution seeks city
control of fireworks

A City Council committee advanced a resolution yesterday calling on the Hawaii Legislature to allow the counties to enact fireworks laws that are stricter than the state law.

"I believe that the entertainment value of fireworks no longer outweighs the cost to the taxpayers ... both in terms of the amount of firefighter time we have to expend fighting fires, but also maintenance and cleanup costs relating to fireworks," said Councilman Charles Djou, who introduced the resolution.

The state law mandates a permit for firecrackers. No such permit is required for novelty fireworks such as sparklers and fountains.

The counties had the power to regulate fireworks until 1995, when the state took the authority away and made regulating fireworks a state responsibility.

Fire Chief Attilio Leonardi, who has called for a ban of consumer fireworks on the Fourth of July, supports the resolution.

"The way this (resolution) is crafted, I think it works out well. It takes the present law, which requires permitting, and allows us to make it much stricter if the Council desires to do so," Leonardi said.

Leonardi said that the issue of whether stricter laws are needed should be done on a county-by-county basis because the problems that Oahu has with brush fires started by fireworks "might not be an issue for the outer islands."

But a representative of the retail industry and fireworks suppliers said the law is already strict and that the problem has been a lack of public education and enforcement.

"The education has to come before the holiday, and then the enforcement comes during that period of time," Dick Botti told the Council's Public Safety Committee.

Committee Chairman Gary Okino said he does see enforcement as the key. "To me the best way to enforce is not to have it at all."

Councilwoman Barbara Marshall also said that any talk of banning fireworks on the Fourth of July should be sensitive not only to ethnic cultures, but to those who have come from the mainland, where the holiday is widely celebrated.

"In my culture, Fourth of July is a big deal, and you celebrate it with fireworks," said Marshall, who moved to Hawaii from the mainland nearly 30 years ago.

The resolution goes to the full Council for a vote on Aug. 10.