Honolulu’s peddling bill is done at the City Council. Bill 52, which raises the fine for selling illegally on city sidewalks from $100 to $500 for a first offense, passed unanimously and went to the mayor. We wrote about it in September when it still had a vote left; this time, the part we kept rereading was not the fine. It was the police saying some visitors only discover what they were charged after they get home.
What happened
The City Council passed Bill 52 at a Wednesday meeting (Oct. 7, going by the date of the report; the story itself just says Wednesday), the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported in an Oct. 12 story by Ian Bauer. With that vote it cleared the Council. Council Chair Tommy Waters, whose district includes Waikiki, introduced it in July. After the vote it was transmitted to Mayor Rick Blangiardi, and the Star-Advertiser says city documents put his deadline to return it at Oct. 23.
The bill does not change who may sell where. It only raises the penalties:
| Offense | Current fine | Under Bill 52 |
|---|---|---|
| First (none in the prior 2 years) | $100 | $500 |
| Second within 2 years | $250 | $750 |
| Third or more within 2 years | $500–$1,000 | $1,000 |
Up to 30 days in jail stays on the books, as it is today, but only for a third violation within two years.
What is new since our September piece on the second reading is mostly in the testimony. HPD Maj. Paul Okamoto, who is assigned to Waikiki, told the Council that HPD has issued roughly 100 peddling citations since 2024, and that 99% of them were in Waikiki and Chinatown. By his count, close to half of the people cited had been cited before; one person was cited on four occasions in a single year. Of those who went to court, 36% pleaded not guilty or no contest, and the most common fine was $100. “We’re citing the same people over and over and over,” he said.
Trevor Abarzua of the Waikiki Business Improvement District said the target is not “high school kids with guitars” but operators “specifically selling tours” who get a ticket and are back “the next hour or the next day.” ABC Stores sent written testimony in support. Not everyone agreed: Oahu resident Awapuhi Robinson said the bill brought the sit-and-lie law to mind, and a Waianae resident wrote that it “hits the wrong people,” treating someone selling lei or plate lunches the same as an organized kiosk operator.
What it changes for a Waikiki stay
For a visitor, the fine is the seller’s problem. Nothing in the bill, as the Star-Advertiser describes it, puts a penalty on the person who buys.
The line that matters to us is the HPD line at the top of the story: illegal peddling can leave tourists exposed to aggressive sales tactics, overcharging and scams, and some victims only find the charges after they have flown home. Put that next to Abarzua’s description of tour sellers and the risk gets specific. If a deal for an excursion or a “discount” gets paid on a sidewalk, there is no counter to go back to, and by the time the statement arrives you are on the mainland.
Waikiki is also one of the few places where even the usual exceptions stop. Okamoto noted that existing law allows the sale of fresh lei, fresh fish and fresh vegetables in most of Oahu, except in narrowly defined areas: “One of which is Waikiki, the other is Chinatown.” Our September piece walks through the license rules in more detail.
A note on the numbers, because they do not line up neatly. In September, Aloha State Daily reported that HPD fined 15 people for illegal peddling in 2024 and 68 in 2025, and that HPD does not keep data on individuals who are fined repeatedly. Okamoto’s “approximately 100 citations since 2024” is a different count: tickets written rather than people fined, so the same person ticketed four times counts four times, and it runs into 2026. We would not add the two sets together or treat one as a check on the other.
What we would do — and what we would not
Our week does not change, because we were never customers of a sidewalk table. We do not rent a car, so everything we buy gets carried: beer from Longs a minute or two from the door, groceries from Waikiki Market about fifteen minutes on foot, the rest from Target on Kūhiō. That list has no room for a folding table, and that is on purpose.
If someone on Kalākaua starts a pitch, our move is the dull one: keep walking, and the card stays in the pocket. Not out of suspicion of any one person — it is just that a charge made on a sidewalk, with no shop behind it, is the one we would least want to untangle from the mainland, and we would rather spend that energy on a 2 pm happy hour. If a tour actually sounds good, the same tour can be booked through the company’s own website or a desk inside a hotel, where there is a receipt and somebody to call.
What we would not do is plan around the sidewalks being emptier by spring. A higher fine only works if someone writes the ticket, and by Okamoto’s own account police keep citing the same people, at a most-common fine of $100. The bill gives police a bigger number to write; whether Kalākaua looks different is something we would rather see than predict.
Before you plan around this
It is not law yet, as far as we can confirm. The Star-Advertiser reported on Oct. 12 that Bill 52 had passed the Council and gone to the mayor, and that city documents give him until Oct. 23 to return it. The bill text itself says the ordinance “takes effect upon its approval.” As of Oct. 14, 2026, we had found no report of the mayor’s decision. We could read the bill text on the Council’s document site, but its bill-status pages did not load for us on Oct. 14, so the vote, the Oct. 23 deadline and the HPD testimony here rest on the Star-Advertiser’s Oct. 12 report rather than on the Council record.
Where each number comes from. The fine table, the jail provision, the testimony and Okamoto’s citation figures are from the Star-Advertiser’s Oct. 12 story; the effective-date wording is from the bill text. The counts of people fined in 2024 and 2025 are from Aloha State Daily’s September story, which attributes them to an HPD spokesperson. The city’s business license page lists the peddler license itself but says nothing about where peddling is banned.
If you already paid someone on the street and something looks wrong, your card issuer is the place to start. Keep whatever the seller gave you.
This is our reading of a bill awaiting the mayor’s action as of October 2026, not legal advice.
