WHEREAS, Act 168, Session Laws of Hawaii 1995, established a joint legislative education statutory revision interim study group to identify guiding principles for statewide education policy that could be adopted and used to evaluate future education legislation; and

WHEREAS, Act 168 also requested the Legislative Reference Bureau to apply a specified organizational framework to the statutory provisions in the Hawaii Revised Statutes relating to lower education, to identify statutes that should be consolidated, amended, or repealed to conform with recent education policy initiatives for the purposes of recodification of the education statutes; and

WHEREAS, Act 89, Session Laws of Hawaii 1996, which established a new education law in the Hawaii Revised Statutes, repealed the existing chapters relating to lower education and amended other provisions relating to lower education, was the result of the recodification project authorized under Act 168; and

WHEREAS, the resulting chapter 302A of the Hawaii Revised Statutes encompasses formerly separate and disparate chapters under a single organizational structure, thereby facilitating one's ability to understand lower education related laws; and

WHEREAS, on the other hand, the statutory provisions relating to higher education are presently scattered among several disparate chapters of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, making it difficult to locate statutes on any given issue or to sense any structure or coherence to those laws; and

WHEREAS, a recodification project for the higher education statutes will give those statutes a level of coherence, organization, and vision, which are presently missing from them; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-second Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2003, that the Chair of the House Committee on Higher Education is respectfully requested to convene a higher education statutory revision interim study group to identify and submit, to the 2004 Regular Session of the Legislature, guiding principles for statewide higher education policy that can be adopted and used to evaluate future higher education legislation; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chair is requested to appoint to the interim study group members who will reflect the constituency of the higher education community and be composed of the following:

and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the interim study group is requested to submit a report of its findings and recommendation to Legislature twenty days prior to the convening of the Regular Session of 2004; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Legislative Reference Bureau is respectfully requested to develop and apply an organizational framework to Title 18, Hawaii Revised Statutes, including but not limited to chapters 304, 305, 305A, 305E, 305H, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, and 311, Hawaii Revised Statutes, to identify statutes that should be consolidated, amended, or repealed to conform with recent higher education policy initiatives for the purposes of recodification of the higher education statutes; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Legislative Reference Bureau is further requested to submit a report of its findings and recommendations along with proposed legislation twenty days prior to the convening of the Regular Session of 2004, to the Chair of the higher education statutory revision interim study group established in this Resolution; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the Chair of the House of Representatives Committee on Higher Education and the Director of the Legislative Reference Bureau.

Report Title:

Higher Education Recodification