Honorable Calvin K.Y. Say

Speaker, House of Representatives

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Labor & Public Employment and Education, to which was referred H.B. No. 1614 entitled:

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this bill is to protect the employment rights of public employees by ensuring that civil service employees of the newly established Department of Education (DOE) Civil Service Personnel System shall have the same benefits and rights of civil service employees employed by the executive departments.

The Department of Education testified in support of this measure. The Hawaii Government Employees Association testified in support of the intent of this bill. The Department of Human Resources Development opposed this measure.

Act 51, Session Laws of Hawaii, 2004, better known as the "Reinventing Education Act", call for DOE to establish a separate civil service personnel system that encompasses all existing DOE employees as well as those who transfer to DOE from other executive departments.

Your Committees find that employees who were under the civil service system established for executive departments who are transferred to the newly created civil service system of DOE should not have their benefits and rights diminished due to this transfer since this is a situation that is beyond their control.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Labor & Public Employment and Education that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 1614 and recommend that it pass Second Reading and be referred to the Committee on Finance.