RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, the State has struggled of late to comply with the Felix v. Cayetano federal consent decree that requires the State to provide certain health and educational services for special education students; and

WHEREAS, the financial burden of complying with the consent decree has been staggering with the Legislature facing an estimated cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars; and

WHEREAS, additionally Congress enacted (what has been known since 1990 as) the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which transferred decisions about the ways in which special education services would be provided from state capitals to Washington D.C., in an effort to alleviate the intrusion that transfer of control over special education had upon an area traditionally reserved to the states. The Act authorized an appropriation of a sum equal to forty per cent of the average per pupil expenditure for general education pupils; and

WHEREAS, the federal government passed the "Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995" (P.L. 104-4, March 22, 1995, 109 Stat. 48) that stated that "the Federal Government should not shift certain costs to the States, and the States should end the practice of shifting costs to local governments, which forces many local governments to increase property taxes; and

WHEREAS, the federal government contributed only approximately seven per cent of special education funding the last fiscal year, which is less than eighteen per cent of the forty per cent of funding promised by Congress; and

WHEREAS, according to recent estimates, Hawaii received only $17,845,000 from Congress for its special education needs; and

WHEREAS, if Congress had fully funded its special education commitment to Hawaii, that appropriation would have totaled $52,931,000; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-first Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2001, the Senate concurring, that President Bush and the United States Congress are respectfully urged to increase funding for special education for Hawaii to meet the federal commitment under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the members of Hawaii's delegation to Congress, and the National Conference of State Legislatures.