STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2194

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2868

       S.D. 1

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Twenty-Eighth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2016

State of Hawaii

Sir:

     Your Committees on Hawaiian Affairs and Judiciary and Labor, to which was referred S.B. No. 2868 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO THE QUALIFICATION OF SUCCESSORS TO LESSEES UNDER THE HAWAIIAN HOMES COMMISSION ACT, 1920, AS AMENDED,"

beg leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to lower to one-thirty-second Hawaiian the blood quantum required by a homestead lessee's husband, wife, children, grandchildren, brothers, or sisters in order to succeed to the lessee's lease.

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands; KA Farmers; Pana‘ewa Hawaiian Home Lands Community Association; Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs; and eighteen individuals.  Your Committees also received a petition of support signed by numerous individuals.  Your Committees received testimony in opposition to this measure from the Center for Hawaiian Sovereignty Studies.  Your Committees received comments on this measure from one individual.

     Your Committees find that as Hawaiian homestead communities age, lessees who are one-quarter Hawaiian may lose leases that have been in their family for several generations because their descendants lack the minimum blood quantum.  The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands testified that it receives requests from beneficiaries to reduce the blood quantum requirement for successors.  This measure would help these families retain homestead leases within their families as the amount of Hawaiian blood quantum within the family may diminish over time.

     Your Committees have amended this measure by 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 Hawaiian Affairs and Judiciary and Labor that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2868, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2868, S.D. 1, and be referred to your Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Hawaiian Affairs and Judiciary and Labor,

________________________________ GILBERT S.C. KEITH-AGARAN, Chair

________________________________ MAILE S.L. SHIMABUKURO, Chair