Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred S.B. No. 1108, S.D. 1, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to remove arbitrary barriers to receiving burial payments for unclaimed corpses.

The bill accomplishes this by allowing a county medical examiner or coroner to submit an application for funeral payments on behalf of an unclaimed corpse more than sixty days from the date of the death of the deceased.

Your Committee finds that the present requirement that application be made within sixty days unduly prevents medical examiners and coroners from applying for funeral payments if certain problems such as identification of the remains or location of surviving family members, causes the sixty-day limit to be exceeded. This measure is designed to remove this arbitrary deadline.

Your Committee has amended this bill by making technical nonsubstantive changes.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Ways and Means that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1108, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1108, S.D. 2.