STAND. COM. REP. NO. 78

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 169

       S.D. 1

Honorable Shan S. Tsutsui

President of the Senate

Twenty-Sixth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2011

State of Hawaii

Sir:

     Your Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Transportation and International Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 169 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO CARGO INSPECTIONS,"

beg leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to require the Departments of Defense and Transportation, in consultation with federal and state agencies and private organizations involved with shipping cargo into the State, to develop and implement a three‑year pilot program to use dogs to inspect incoming cargo for illegal fireworks and explosives smuggled into the State. 

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from one state department.  Comments were received from one state department.

     This measure is intended to increase random inspections of incoming cargo for illegal fireworks and explosives by establishing a pilot program using dogs to inspect cargo shipments after they have been transported from the harbors.

     Your Committees find that more than two hundred thousand shipping cargo containers that arrive in Hawaii each year are from the continental United States.  Only a small fraction of these containers, however, are inspected by government agencies.  Shipping companies conduct random checks of less than five per cent of incoming cargo containers, and these inspections are mainly conducted to ensure that senders of cargo have been properly charged.  This lack of sufficient cargo inspections means that there is ample opportunity for illegal fireworks and explosives to be smuggled into the State.

     Your Committees have amended this measure by:

     (1)  Making the pilot program permissive rather than mandatory;

     (2)  Inserting an effective date of July 1, 2050, to allow for further discussion of this measure; and

     (3)  Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Transportation and International Affairs that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 169, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 169, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Transportation and International Affairs,

____________________________ J. KALANI ENGLISH, Chair

____________________________ WILL ESPERO, Chair