Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2004

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred S.B. No. 3230, S.D. 1, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds for childhood care programs.

Specifically, this bill appropriates an unspecified sum to fund community-based, collaborative, comprehensive early childhood care direct services for children under age five and their families; provided that any such funding shall be used for the implementation of community-based, comprehensive direct service delivery systems, and not for planning, studies, or other strategic functions.

Your Committee has received information that a pilot project should be established in areas of critical need to receive early childhood care direct services. Your Committee finds that these areas include East Hawaii, mainly in the Puna and Hilo areas, and in Waianae on Oahu.

Upon further consideration, your Committee has amended this bill to require the Department of Human Services to establish a pilot project to provide community-based, collaborative, comprehensive early childhood care direct services for children under age five and their families in critical need areas as the department may determine. Your Committee has also amended the bill to require that the Department of Human Services submit a report on the pilot project to the Legislature prior to the 2005 Regular Session.

Although your Committee has provided the Department of Human Services with the authority to determine where the pilot project sites are to be situated, your Committee believes that, given the current critical early childhood care needs evidenced in the Puna and Hilo areas on the island of Hawaii and the Waianae area on Oahu, these areas would be ideal pilot project sites.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Ways and Means that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 3230, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 3230, S.D. 2.