Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Education, to which was referred S.B. No. 522 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to repeal the education storeroom revolving fund and transfer its balance to EDN 300.

Your Committee heard testimony in support of the measure from the Department of Education.

Your Committee finds that the Department of Education is in the process of streamlining its procurement process and exploring new means of providing schools with commonly used items. For instance, neighbor island schools may be better served by online procurement instead of by a central storeroom located on Oahu. Eliminating the statutory requirement to have a physical storeroom while increasing the flexibility of the special fund will aid the efforts of the Department in streamlining its procurement process.

Your Committee further finds that eliminating the statutory requirement to have a physical storeroom is not intended as a call for the dissolution of the storeroom. It is simply to provide the Department of Education with additional flexibility. In fact, the Committee would like to applaud the good efforts of the employees of the storeroom, who have taken numerous internal measures to increase customer satisfaction and save the State money. These improvements include the expediting of shipping and delivery, saving of printing costs by moving to email notification, allowing customers to purchase from private vendors as needed, and exploring the possibility of online ordering.

Your Committee has amended the measure by changing the fund from an education storeroom revolving fund to an education procurement revolving fund, instead of repealing the fund altogether.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Education that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 522, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 522, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.