Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Judiciary, to which was referred S.B. No. 637, S.D. 1, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to require driver's licenses and state identification cards to display a person's date of birth in a form that can be read electronically.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Attorney General, the Honolulu Department of Customer Services, the Chair and three members of the Maui County Council, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and Youth in Action.

Your Committee finds that youth in Hawaii have relatively easy access to alcohol, and that underage drinking is a serious social problem. Using falsified identification is one of the most popular means for persons under twenty-one to purchase alcohol.

Your Committee finds that this measure will make it extremely difficult to falsify the date of birth on a driver's license or identification card, because such information will be imprinted in a bar code that can be read electronically.

An electronically imprinted date of birth will also aid law enforcement officials, who will be able quickly and accurately to determine the age of a person encountered drinking alcohol.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 637, S.D. 1, and recommends that it pass Third Reading.