House Standing Committee on Finance

Okay, we're going to convene the Committee on Finance to hear one measure before us today, probably the most important one to most of us here. Okay, this is House Bill 1440 relating to making an appropr- appropria- appropriation to provide expenses for the Legislature, the Auditor, the Legislative Reference Bureau, the Ombudsman, and the Ethics Commission.

Okay, first up, we have LRB.

Good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee, I'm Charlotte Carter-Yamauchi, the Director of the Legislative Reference Bureau. We stand in very strong support of this measure and ask you to pass it. Be happy to answer any questions, but we just stand on our written testimony. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next is the Office of the Ombudsman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Vice Chair Members. Robin Matsunaga, State Ombudsman. You have my written testimony in support of this Bill, and I'm present for any questions you may have.

Thank you. Okay, next is Hawaii State Ethics Commission.

Aloha, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee. My name is Robert Harris. On behalf of the Hawaii State Ethics Commission, we are in support of this measure.

We have our annual report attached which covers some of our highlights and, and accomplishments this year. We appreciate you for your support and your help in allowing all these accomplishments to happen. Mahalo.

Okay, thank you. Next is the Office of the Auditor.

Good afternoon. I'm Les Kondo. I'm the Auditor. With me today is Daria Loy-Goto. She's the Deputy Auditor. Thank you for your support of my office and our work. We submitted written testimony in support of HB 1440. This morning I was told that our appropriation that we supported was $2.8 million too much.

But we understand the error, so we certainly appreciate the correction, which we should have caught ourselves. So we apologize for not identifying that for you guys. My office is a really valuable resource for the Legislature.

You know, our bread and butter is performance audits, where we assess the performance of programs that the Legislature establishes and the Legislature funds. So we provide an independent, objective analysis of program performance, which includes how efficiently and effectively programs are using state resources, which include state funds. You know, we've got to do more.

My office needs to do more. And I read in the paper about things like the Department of Education's very small percentage of local products that go on to school lunches. I read in the paper about all of the IT projects, state IT projects that fail, they're delayed, they're over budget, and sometimes they're terminated.

I see the coconut trees without the fronds where the coconut rhinoceros beetles have devastated those plants. We need to assess what DOA is doing to determine or to eradicate the pest and also to prevent other pests from coming into the state. We need to do more. So my office is here as a resource for the Legislature.

I know we're going to get work coming out of session, but to the extent that we have capacity, we will do more. We will look at some of these other issues.

If you folks have questions about what my office does and how we might be able to help the Legislature, I'm happy to talk to you folks offline individually. And if you have audits, proposed audits, I'm happy to talk to you about the language so we can specifically identify what you are interested in us assessing.

Anyway, thank you very much. Happy to answer your questions about my office or our budget. Anyway, thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. We have one individual in support. And, Brian, you don't have anything. Okay. Okay. Very good. Okay. Seeing there's no more testifiers before us, Members will open up to questions. Any questions? Okay, very good. Okay, we're going to recess for decision making. Recess.

Okay. We're going to reconvene the Committee on Finance for decision making on House Bill 1440. Members, we're going to pass this out as an HD1 with some technical amendments. First, on page one, section one, line five, it reads 2004-2005 has already exceeded by 8,051,776. We're going to change it to 775. It's a rounding error.

And then on page five, section seven, line eight. No, line nine, line nine. We're changing that one amount, 6,561,208. It was duplicated in another area, so the amount should read 3,761,208. And that was what the Auditor referred to in his testimony. With that, we're going to pass with amendments. Any discussion? Okay. Vice Chair for the vote.

Members voting on HB 1440, Chair's recommendation is to pass with amendments.

[ROLL CALL]

Your recommendation is adopted.

Okay, thank you very much, Members. We are adjourned.