STAND. COM. REP. 2563

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2004

RE: S.B. No. 267

S.D. 2

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2004

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Water, Land, and Agriculture, to which was referred S.B. No. 267, S.D. 1, entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO PUBLIC LANDS,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to require the governor or executive agency taking any action on transactions involving public lands that is subject to legislative disapproval, to provide reasonable, timely, and sufficient notice of that action to the legislature.

Testimony in opposition to the measure was submitted by the Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawaii.

Your Committee finds that the legislature has a statutory obligation to review and consider certain transactions concerning public lands and the authority to disapprove of any of those transactions that it deems improper or not in the public interest. However, most of the statutory provisions establishing that legislative authority lack a mechanism for ensuring that the legislature will be provided reasonable and timely notice of those transactions. Additionally, the references to special sessions in those provisions create ambiguity in determining when the legislative authority may be exercised and undermines the legislature's ability to receive timely notice of those transactions. Your Committee finds that omission and ambiguity hampers the legislature's ability to perform its duties effectively.

Accordingly, your Committee has amended this measure by:

(1) Deleting reference to special sessions in the procedure for exercising legislative disapprovals;

(2) Requiring that the legislative disapproval for each transaction involving public lands be expressed in a concurrent resolution adopted in the regular session during which the transaction occurs, or in the next regular session following the date of the transaction;

(3) Requiring that written notice of the transaction be given to the legislature; and

(4) Requiring that notice for any transaction involving public lands that occurs between the period commencing ten calendar days prior to the deadline for the introduction of concurrent resolutions for the regular session and ending ten calendar days prior to the deadline for the introduction of concurrent resolutions for the next following regular session, be given to the legislature no later than ten calendar days prior to the deadline for the introduction of concurrent resolutions for the next regular session following the date of the transaction.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Water, Land, and Agriculture that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 267, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 267, S.D. 2.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Water, Land, and Agriculture,

____________________________

LORRAINE R. INOUYE, Chair