Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2002

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health and Human Services, to which was referred S.B. No. 2453 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure, as received, is to require an audit of residential care homes to assure that they are appropriately dispersing personal needs funds.

Testimony in support of this measure was submitted by the Executive Office on Aging, the Hawaii Disability Rights Center, and three private citizens. Testimony in opposition to this measure was submitted by the Department of Human Services, Alliance of Residential Care Administrators, and a private citizen.

Your Committee finds that the audit proposed in this measure will be problematic because while the statutes specify a total payment amount, it does not specify how much should be spent on personal needs. The Department generally recommends $30 for personal needs, but there is no requirement that the client be given the $30, nor is there a standard imposed on the provider in meeting personal needs.

Your Committee further finds that the Department of Health regularly audits the accounting of residents funds in all residential care homes. Therefore, upon further consideration, your Committee has replaced the contents of this measure with the contents of a modified version of S.B. No. 2500 that provides an increase in the personal needs allowance based on the supplemental security income cost of living allowance increase.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health and Human Services that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2453, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2453, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.