Both houses of the Hawaii legislature have passed HB 661, which establishes a pilot project of public funding for Hawaii County Council elections. Hawaii County has non-partisan elections for county council, so naturally the bill treats all candidates equally (when public funding bills are introduced for partisan elections, sometimes they are written to discriminate in favor of Republican and Democratic nominees).

The bill is in conference committee. Here is a somewhat amusing news story about the bill. Some of the funniest parts are toward the end of the article.