Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2003

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations, to which was referred S.B. No. 1146 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to decrease, from ten to five, the number of years that the county clerk's office must retain campaign spending reports.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Campaign Spending Commission (Commission).

Your Committee finds that public access to recent campaign spending reports is a vitally important component of the democratic process that must be preserved. However, your Committee also realizes that the Commission is overrun with paper, partially due to the fact that it maintains all original campaign spending reports from the past ten years in hard copy in its office.

Due to the recent increase in electronic filing of campaign spending reports, your Committee believes that it will be much easier for the Commission to retain records electronically; one election period worth of reports can be stored on a single CD-Rom, which can replace several file cabinets. Your Committee believes that the reports should be stored electronically now, and that the county clerks' offices should not have to hold the reports for a full ten years.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1146 and recommends that it pass Second Reading and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs.