STAND. COM. REP. NO.231

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2003

RE: S.B. No. 381

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2003

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 381 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT MAKING AN APPROPRIATION FOR THE PAYMENT OF DAMAGES FOR HAWAIIAN HOME LANDS TRUST INDIVIDUAL CLAIMS,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to make an appropriation for the payment of monetary damages to claimants whose claims have been adjudicated by the Hawaiian home lands trust individual claims review panel (panel).

Testimony in support of this measure was received from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, Ka Lahui Hawaii, Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs, Davis Levin Livingston Grande, and twenty-three individuals.

Chapter 674, Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS), establishes a process under which individual beneficiaries under the Hawaiian home lands trust may resolve claims for actual damages arising out of or resulting from a breach of trust, which occurred between August 21, 1959, and June 30, 1988, and was caused by an act or omission of an employee of the State in the management and disposition of trust resources. Your Committee finds that payments are unreasonably overdue.

Your Committee listened intently to the heartfelt pain of heirs to now deceased beneficiaries who were awarded damages by the panel but never lived to see compensation. This measure would provide that compensation, along with a recognition of their grief.

Your Committee has amended this measure by increasing the appropriation amount to $17,970,822.74 to compensate an additional fifty-three claimants.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 381, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 381, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs,

____________________________

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Chair