STAND. COM. REP. NO. 829

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 1030

       S.D. 2

Honorable Colleen Hanabusa

President of the Senate

Twenty-Fourth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2007

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred S.B. No. 1030, S.D. 1, entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO BURIAL SITES,"

begs leave to report as follows:

     The purpose of this measure is to require the Department of Land and Natural Resources to map and maintain confidential records for inadvertently discovered human skeletal remains and locations of reburial sites and human remains.

     More specifically, the bill appropriates funds to the department to use global positioning devices for the proper location of burial sites and sites of reinterment and clarifies that the records are not confidential to lineal or cultural descendants.

     The Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology submitted comments in support of the bill.  The Department of Land and Natural Resources submitted comments.

     Your Committee finds that under current law the Historic Preservation Division of the Department of Land and Natural Resources is tasked with the location and administration of native Hawaii burial sites.  Your Committee further finds that the procedures currently in place do not guarantee the confidentiality and the accuracy of the information on burial sites.

     Your Committee finds that using global positioning devices for locating burial and reinterment sites will provide the necessary accuracy.  Furthermore, requiring that the information obtained remains confidential because a recordation of a burial site with the Bureau of Conveyances is no longer required and instead, the Department of Land and Natural Resources will establish and keep confidential the information relating to burial sites, except to lineal or cultural descendants.

     Upon further consideration your Committee has amended the bill to make technical nonsubstantive amendments for purposes of clarity, style, and consistency and to change the appropriation amount to an unspecified sum to facilitate further discussion on this issue.

     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. 1030, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1030, S.D. 2.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Ways and Means,

____________________________

ROSALYN H. BAKER, Chair