Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations and Judiciary, to which was referred S.B. No. 1544 entitled:

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to establish the state Information Practices Commission (Commission) to coordinate and oversee the work of the Office of Information Practices (OIP) and to find a permanent administrative home for OIP.

Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Hawaii State Ethics Commission, the League of Women Voters of Hawaii, Common Cause Hawaii, the Hawaii Coalition for Health, and Advocates for Consumer Rights. In addition, the director of OIP testified orally to provide comments on this measure.

Your Committees agree that public access to government information is one of the cornerstones of a transparent participatory democracy. The OIP was established as a temporary office to facilitate distribution of public information to governmental agencies and to the public at large.

Your Committees find that OIP has been without a permanent administrative home since its establishment, and has been moved several times during that period. Your Committees support the creation of the Commission, which shall be charged with the responsibility to study the issue of a permanent home for OIP, and to make recommendations to the legislature based on its findings. The Commission will also oversee certain other aspects of the work of OIP, including providing approval of written opinions issued by OIP.

At the hearing on this measure, your Committees learned that OIP has insufficient personnel to meet all of the requests it receives. The director testified that OIP was currently operating at approximately eighteen per cent of its optimum personnel capacity.

Although this measure does not assign additional duties to OIP, your Committees recognize that the Commission will also require immediate funding for its work, and to coordinate its efforts with OIP. Therefore, your Committees amended this measure to appropriate $1,000,000 to the Commission under the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, to be used for the administrative expenses of the Commission. Your Committee also made technical, nonsubstantive amendments for clarity.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations and Judiciary that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1544, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1544, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.