STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2228

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2855

       S.D. 1

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Seventh State Legislature

Regular Session of 2014

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committee on Health, to which was referred S.B. No. 2855 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT MAKING AN EMERGENCY APPROPRIATION TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH FOR THE DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES DIVISION,"

begs leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to make an emergency appropriation to the Department of Health for the provision of services provided by the Developmental Disabilities Division for adults and children living in Hawaii as citizens of Compact of Free Association (COFA) countries who are eligible to receive those services.

     Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Health, Hawaii Disability Rights Center, Community Alliance for Mental Health, and State Council on Developmental Disabilities.

     Your Committee finds that COFA citizens must be provided community-based services with one hundred percent state funding from the Department of Health to comply with a federal court directive.  Your Committee further finds that this new development requires the Department of Health to provide home and community-based services to forty-seven newly eligible individuals, creating the necessity for the emergency appropriation proposed by this measure.

     Your Committee has amended this measure by making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2855, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2855, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Health,

____________________________

JOSH GREEN, Chair