STAND. COM. REP. NO. 29

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                  

 

RE:    S.B. No. 606

       S.D. 1

 

 

 

Honorable Shan S. Tsutsui

President of the Senate

Twenty-Sixth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2011

State of Hawaii

 

Sir:

 

     Your Committees on Transportation and International Affairs and Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 606 entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO TRANSFER OF STATE HIGHWAYS,"

 

beg leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to establish a pilot project to provide for the transfer of all state highway functions located on a county from the State to an unspecified county.

 

     Your Committees received testimony in support of the concept of this measure from the State Departments of Transportation and Human Resources Development.  Testimony in opposition to this measure was received from the Office of the Mayor and Department of Design and Construction, City and County of Honolulu; and the Office of the Mayor, County of Kauai.  Comments were received from two County of Maui council members.

 

     Your Committees find that the State's current fiscal crisis necessitates an abolition of duplicative state and county functions.  The Department of Transportation and the counties share overlapping functions for construction and maintenance of highways.  Your Committees further find that counties are more economically efficient at providing highway functions inasmuch as the highways are inherently a county function in Hawaii which does not have an interstate highway system similar to mainland states.

 

     Your Committees have amended this measure by making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

 

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Transportation and International Affairs and Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 606, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 606, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Transportation and International Affairs and Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs,

 

____________________________

WILL ESPERO, Chair

 

____________________________

J. KALANI ENGLISH, Chair