STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2427

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2047

       S.D. 1

Honorable Shan S. Tsutsui

President of the Senate

Twenty-Sixth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2012

State of Hawaii

Sir:

     Your Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Water, Land, and Housing, to which was referred S.B. No. 2047 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO HOUSING,"

beg leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to increase the time the county councils have to review affordable housing projects from forty-five to sixty days.

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation, Hawai‘i Association of Counties, and one individual.  Testimony in opposition was received from the Hawaii County Office of Housing and Community Development.

     Your Committees find the forty-five day window for a legislative body to approve, approve with modification, or disapprove an affordable housing project to be an inadequate amount of time to have a meaningful discussion on a proposed project.  Allowing sixty days will still provide for an expedited review while increasing the amount of time the legislative body of a county has to exercise its due diligence in evaluating a proposed project.

     Your Committees have amended this measure by deleting the authority of the county legislative body to approve with modification.

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Water, Land, and Housing that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2047, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2047, S.D. 1, and be placed on the calendar for Third Reading.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs and Water, Land, and Housing,

____________________________ DONOVAN M. DELA CRUZ, Chair

____________________________ WILL ESPERO, Chair