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 Tourism and Intergovernmental Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 209 entitled:

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to amend the State's law regarding parking for persons with disabilities to prevent fraudulent activity and violations, and to facilitate better enforcement.

Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Honolulu Police Department, Advocates for Consumer Rights, the Disability and Communication Access Board, two disabled parking enforcement officers, and several concerned citizens.

Your Committees find that our laws regarding parking for persons with disabilities are often abused and violated, at all levels of the process. Your Committees find that physicians sometimes fraudulently certify persons as disabled who are not. On the other end of the process, some persons allow others without disabilities use their parking placards.

This measure creates five new sections in chapter 291, Hawaii Revised Statutes, and amends several other sections in that chapter. Your Committees find that the provisions of this measure will make it much more difficult to violate our laws regarding parking for persons with disabilities. This is especially important due to the scarcity of spaces reserved for disabled persons.

Based on testimony compiled by the Disability and Communications Access Board, your Committees amended several sections in this measure. First, your Committees deleted the provision allowing a county to charge a fee to replace a mutilated parking placard. In addition, your Committees inserted a provision to require identification cards for disabled persons to bear a photograph of the holder. Your Committees also made several technical, nonsubstantive amendments.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations and Tourism and Intergovernmental Affairs that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 209, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 209, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary.