Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2004

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 2395, S.D. 1, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to exempt the Hawaii Convention Center from the freedom of information law, upon request by a potential licensee, if compliance would result in the non-execution of a license agreement.

Testimony in support of this measure was submitted by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Testimony in opposition was submitted by the Hawaii Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Comments were received from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism and Office of Information Practices.

Your Committee finds that there is a need for the Hawaii Convention Center to prevent information normally disclosed under freedom of information laws to be kept confidential for a period of time. Your Committee finds that this need is necessary to facilitate bookings at the Hawaii Convention Center.

Specifically, this measure addresses the situation where a potential licensee requests the pre-booking and booking information, including the license agreement, to be kept confidential. A licensee may want to do this for a variety of reasons, including maintaining privacy of planned corporate activities and of corporate publicity. Some companies include a nondisclosure provision in their license agreements as a standard procedure. Testimony indicated that a potential licensee may decide to book at another convention center if the booking information cannot be kept confidential.

Following the hearing on this measure, the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, Hawaii Tourism Authority, and Office of Information Practices mutually agreed on amendments to this measure. Upon receipt of these amendments, your Committee adopted the changes and amended this measure by:

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2395, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2395, S.D. 2.