House Standing Committee on Economic Development & Technology

Good morning, everyone, to the Committee on Economic Development and Technology. Today is Wednesday, March 12, 2025 and the time is 10. We are here at the Conference Room 423 at the State Capitol. Thank you for being here.

Before I start on the top of the agenda for our testimony, I would like to read a disclaimer for the Committee. If you are disconnected unexpectedly, you may attempt to rejoin the meeting. If disconnected while presenting testimony, you may be allowed to continue if time permits.

Please note the House is not responsible for any bad Internet connections on the testifier's end. In the event of a network failure, it may be necessary to reschedule the hearing or schedule a meeting for decision making. In that case, an appropriate notice will be posted. Please avoid using any trademark or copyrighted images.

Please refrain from profanity on uncivil behavior. Such behavior may be grounds for removal from the hearing without the ability to rejoin. All right, well, thank you for hearing that out. I will start out our testifiers on SB 989. At the moment, we have Hawaii Food Industry Association in Zoom, in support. Not present. Give me a second. We also have the Chamber of Commerce in person, in support.

We'll stand on our written testimony in support. Thank you.

Thank you. We have HTDC, Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, in support.

Morning, chair, vice chair, members of the committee. Wayne Inouye, TDC. We stand on our support. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there any other testifiers in the room? Any in Zoom? With no further testifiers wishing to testify. Any questions, Members? No questions or comments. Moving on to our next item, SB 1589. We have. We have the stadium authority in support. Comments.

Thank you. Is there any others wishing to testify? Any in zoom with no others wishing to testify. Any comments, Members with no comments. No questions. We're moving on to our next item, SB148. Our first testifier is Department of Commerce and Consumer Protect Consumer Affairs Chair.

Members of the committee, department stands on its written testimony offering comments.

Thank you. We have. We have an individual. Well, this. Give me a moment while I. I believe that is all the testifiers. Is there any others wishing to testify in person?

Yes.

Or on Zoom? Oh.

Sorry, I'm on zoom.

Yes. Please say your name.

Walt Carvalho, Big island of Hawaii. Good morning. Representative Ilagan and honorable staff that you have up front. Stand in support of the bill with amendments for sure. Just, you know, we. We don't want to drag around.

We've been doing this for the third year, and what we're trying to do now is keep the commission, the new commission, MMA and boxing, separate. Or maybe one commission with two divisions so that each can provide for themselves. Haven't been anything done in 18 years with the boxing commission.

And over the last 14 years, the commission that is now in place or the committee has dwindled this program all the way down to zero from 140 shows and events a year, all the way down to zero.

So we stand in support with those amendments of trying to keep these two units separate so that we can get one going at a time. And thank you for your time.

Thank you. Thank you, Walter. Moving on to our next testifier, Mr. Deng on Zoom. He is not on Zoom. Is there any others wishing to testify on Zoom? I. Doesn't look like anyone else. Members, any questions? I do have some questions. If we could have CPC come up. Or actually not CPC.

DCCA.

Yeah, DCCA. Sorry. I'm thinking about committees. I read over your testimony and when I was looking through it, I realized some of the testimony suggests amendments, recommendations, deal a lot with cost versus safety.

And I wanted to ask you first, with the current bill, how much of the amendments deal with safety and how much of it we're adding additional costs for the industry to be able to move forward?

So there isn't, in our testimony, there is a amendment or a recommended request regarding the EMS units at the fight. So that, that definitely is a safety issue.

So what I have is testing. You want to add HIV testing. You also want to make sure ambulance is there, so ready to respond when there's something happening. You also want to ensure that physicians, not just one, but two physicians.

You also want to add the physician's requirement not as one hour, but three hours, and not just for active time, but beyond that and adding these additional costs for any event to happen. We have costs that's needed to make these happen. What I wanted to ask is are you?

And the answer to that, I'm assuming, is you're more wanting to ensure the safety of these events rather than thinking about additional costs that would be needed to make sure these requirements are met.

So, chair, a couple of things. So a lot of those requirements are already requirements in the MMA program that the department administers. So we're just asking for those things to be in this combined commission as well.

We also did check with various other states, as stated in our testimony, the fact that they have these requirements, safety requirements as well. Now, in our working group that we held 23 and 24, we did, there were discussions about trying to look at ways to help costs, especially for promoters of smaller events in the state.

So we are willing to continue those discussions moving forward. But there are, like I said, we are trying to mirror the safety requirements of other combat sports commissions throughout the nation, as well as not taking away from the safety requirements that we currently have in the MMA program that we administer today.

At this moment, without this bill, we have boxing as the only commission.

They are commission. MMA is a program right now under the department.

Oh, it's a program. So you are overseeing that regulation. How is that going? Are we seeing a lot of? Walter, if you don't mind, could you hit the mute. Sorry. How's that going?

Yeah, so we believe that this combined Sports Commission, which similarly is done in other states as well, I think is a win win for for everyone in the fact that it costs us approximately $245,000 or more to set up a separate commission.

Say that again. How much?

About $245,000 to set up a separate sports commission. A separate commission, period. So if we can combine boxing and this martial art, you know, commission, I think it's a win win. Now.

Is there any additional cost that.

No, that cost, $245,000 plus, gets passed on to the licensees.

So in this case, we would be able to create a win win, we believe, in doing this.

And this is a great win win. And I want to make sure that you're able to provide a safe environment as well. I want to also be mindful that you add in more additional requirements, the cost will also go up. Is there a way to where? Because right now the bill doesn't address the things that I mentioned.

Is there a way we can include those safety, those safety measures? But have your department, DCCA, be able to be mindful on certain case by case, event by event when you're adding these additional costs, that they're able to meet it. But if they can't, it wouldn't hinder moving forward with that event and stifling future events.

Because what I would hate to do is impose all these safety regulations and then we can't even create an event because it's just too hard and too many regulations to meet. So I wanted to ask you how much, like how much can. Are we going to impact the industry with adding all of this in?

Well, in the past they've been able. And again, some of these promoters are more toward the larger scale events. They've been able to comply with the safety requirements without any issue. And again, it's the smaller events that have obvious problems with doing that. And again, like I said, we're willing to continue that dialogue with them.

It's just that if we don't put these safety requirements in, we don't know how to be able to regulate one from the other. You know, we talked about maybe size of the event as being some kind of criteria that you guys could probably put something in there.

Why don't we do that? Why don't we blank out the.

We could probably reduce some of the numbers based on the size, but we'd be willing to work with you. We don't want to totally eliminate anything in the event that we'd be creating an unsafe environment, obviously.

Correct. So why don't we try to add some of these safety measures that you're requesting for? However, there'll be a criteria depending on larger events and smaller events, and then you can have more discretion when it comes to the smaller events, because that's where the cost would impact if it were to move forward. That's fine. Okay.

The other questions I had was regarding the amateur combat sports. You're asking to be able to regulate the amateur contest. What's the reasoning for that compared to the professional events?

I think we currently have that ability as long as they're adults. We don't do any kind of minor things, but we currently have that.

So on section 8, you're asking for these definitions regarding the amateur events or the amateur contest, and I just need a little bit more reasoning.

Those are currently in our. In our program rules as well.

Okay.

Today.

So you're saying that this just clarifies it.

Yeah, so make sure we put this in this bill as well.

Okay, but you are overseeing every every participant 18 and over? Okay, the last question deals with section six. You mentioned that, and I think it's a great catch. There are some provisions in boxing that's mentioned that's not addressed in this bill.

And I can understand the confusion when we are now converting the boxing commission into a combat sport commission, and I want to add some amendments to ensure that we're able to fix some of those things so there isn't any confusion there. And then I. I guess this is the last one. Delay implementation.

Do you need that one year to be able to implement it? When?

Yeah, we have to set up administrative rules as well as we have new commissioners coming on, too. So we asked for that.

What, about six months?

Yeah, we'd have to.

I mean, it's already existing. You already have.

We have the boxing administrative rules, but yeah, we got to kind of combine it all into one, so.

So you already have a MMA program under the Boxing Commission, and there's. It's not like you're recreating a whole new thing here. You're just changing.

But we'd have to take the existing boxing administrative rules and the MMA program rules and then combine them into one set of rules. We asked for a year. Obviously, if we don't take a year, that's fine. We're not gonna try and do it as fast as we can.

Okay, well, six months, I think you'll be able to do it. Well. Thank you. Is there any questions? Comments? All right, let's move on to the next Item. We have HSB 816. Our first testifier is Hawaii State LGBTQ Commission in Zoom in support.

Good morning. Michael Golojuch Jr. Vice Chair of the Hawaii State LGBTQ Commission. We stand in our testimony and strong support of this bill. Mahalo.

Thank you. We have Office of the Public Defender in support, in person. Moving on to our next testifier, Rainbow Family 808 in support in Zoom. Not present. Moving on to our next cessifier, ACLU Hawaii in person in support.

Good morning. Nathan Lee for the ACLU of Hawaii in support. We want to emphasize the due process of law and fair access to justice are essential to a healthy and functioning justice system and to fostering public trust and legal outcomes.

The ripple effects of deportation and other immigration hearings are often just as consequential on an individual's life as a criminal proceeding, if not more. And even though these safeguards exist for criminal cases, there's currently no guaranteed right to legal counsel in immigration hearings. And we believe the passage of SB 816 SD2 would remedy this.

We also want to note that research has shown that immigrants who have legal representation are four times more likely to be released from detention when they had a custody hearing if they had representation. Again, 11 times more likely to apply for relief from deportation, like asylum.

And those that did seek immigration relief when aided by a counselor, were twice as likely to obtain it. And so we believe that what's going on here is a vindication of legal rights for people who many times do have a legal right to be in this country.

And we believe that without providing counsel, immigration hearings will become unjustly skewed against low income people who are. Who may qualify for asylum but might have difficulty arguing this before a judge without the assistance of counsel. And so for these reasons, we ask that you support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier, we have Pride at Work Hawaii in support in Zoom.

Good morning. Michael Golojuch Jr. President of Pride at Work. He him pronouns. We stand in strong support of this bill. We'd like to focus the rest of our verbal testimony on the economic of this bill, because unfortunately, those that are opposing this bill only care about two things.

Praising and honoring the orange menace at the White House and money. So let's look at what our immigrants do for our economy, our immigration, our immigrant community puts into our economy account for $11 billion of our economy every year. What does that mean for when we look at taxes? $157 million.

$157 million is whether you look at tax revenue. Immigrants make up the backbone of our hospitality industry, as well as our nursing as well as our health care system.

So while we wish we could just stand on the fact that this is a great bill in and of itself because it's the right thing to do and it's a moral thing, it's the just thing, but we are giving you this money, even though how distasteful it is to boil down somebody's rights and civil rights down to dollars.

We just know that somehow that's only way that will get through some people's heads, that this is a great bill, that we need more of this. It's sad that we actually need this bill, but given the attacks that we're seeing on the immigrant communities, that this bill is desperately needed, as was laid out by the previous testifier.

And so we encourage you to pass this bill and pass other bills to protect our immigrants, immigrant communities, because immigrants make this country great. So we encourage you, again, pass this bill. Mahalo.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier UH Refugee and Immigration Law Clinic in support in Zoom.

Thank you so much. Good morning, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee, Dana Koramos with the UH Refugee and Immigration Law Clinic. UH we stand on our written testimony and support.

We did include in our written testimony a suggested amendment regarding providing training and education for partners and legal practitioners who are interested in doing this work, especially deportation defense and asylum.

I think while this bill is important in building the capacity to serve this community, it's also important that when we do these, that we provide training so that we can sustain this work for them beyond the next four years. Thank you so much, and we're happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you. Moving to our next testifier, we have the Legal Clinic and support in person.

Good morning, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee. Sandy Ma for the Legal Clinic, testifying in support of SB 816. Thank you for hearing this important bill. The Legal Clinic is a direct legal services provider for immigrants in this community.

This bill is necessary, as people have testified, because people in this country, whether they are here with papers or without valid papers, enjoy constitutional protections. Everyone here in this country enjoy constitutional protections. When people are in immigration court, people are not entitled to counsel as of record provided by the government.

That's because immigration court is not a criminal proceeding. While people are entitled to constitutional protections, they are not entitled to counsel provided to them. And so people as young as toddlers, as infant in arms, can appear in immigration court without counsel. And so while in immigration court, the penalties are as severe as those in criminal court.

You could be separated from family, you could be removed from this country. While people think that some people may think that it could be justified, There are two sides, of course, to every story and nothing is black and white. So that's why this bill is in incredibly necessary, especially in these fraught times.

So thank you again for hearing this bill. I'm available to answer any questions and I encourage you respectfully to move this out of your Committee. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to the next testifier, we have Hawaii Friends of Civil Rights in support, in person.

Good morning, and thank you very much for hearing this bill. I, actually, I'm with the Hawaii Friends of Civil Rights and I stand on my written testimony. I would like to acknowledge the amendment proposed by the UH Law School. I think it's important and can be accommodated, and I support that also.

Thank you. Moving on to Hawaii Coalition for Immigrant Rights, in support in Zoom. Oh, in person. Glad you made it.

Aloha, chair, vice chair, members of the committee. Liza Ryan Gill, Executive Director of the Hawaii Coalition for Immigrant Rights, representing about 30 immigrant-serving and led organizations across the Pai Aina. I just want to tell you what's going on right now. So it's been about seven weeks in this Administration.

We now know the quota for Hawaii is about 40 arrests per week. The first indications that this was changing and that we were seeing something different was on Hawaii Island, and so we have been in constant communication with our members, especially in Kona regarding the detention of minors.

So you may have seen in the news that a first grader was taken out of elementary school and that three kids were picked up last week. Now we were told that these were welfare checks on minors to make sure that they hadn't been trafficked and that they were safe. We wholeheartedly support that.

We want to make sure that every keiki in our state is safe and--but when Homeland Security investigations and the NERO, the internal removal operations of ICE came back to this family, they found the children with their parents and took three of these elementary school-age students and their mom.

Now we were not able to reach these individuals once they were in custody, they were not able to access an attorney, and we got word yesterday that they were in their country of origin leaving one child behind here. I say all of that because I know that the intention was to detain and deport convicted criminals.

These were seven-year-olds and they did not have an opportunity to plead their case. They didn't have an opportunity to talk about fear of returning to their home country, and I don't think that that is justice. I think that we have asylum law in this country where people are allowed to flee legally and come and plead their case in this country.

Now, with the new expedited removal orders from the federal Administration and numerous changes that we've seen, including the rescission of the sensitive location memo, meaning that immigration can come to churches and schools and hospitals and conduct operations there, we are seeing a massive shift in the landscape and this is impacting families across the board.

And most individuals--and we think of status as something that is black and white. It's not black and white. People often have a pathway to stay in this country lawfully for a number of different reasons and also because the president is currently removing status from individuals, people who had a lawful status here, and now they need to find another way to fight before they are sent back to Ukraine or Venezuela or Haiti, places where they might be killed.

So I say this because these are life and death situations that we're talking about, and when folks cannot have someone who understands the extremely complex situation of immigration law, they lose, and these families, when they are separated, are a loss to all of us. Forty percent of our agricultural workers are immigrants. Sixty percent of our housekeepers are immigrants.

Our economy does not work without these families that are oftentimes in all various types of statuses and who sincerely desire to give their best to Hawaii. So all I ask is that they have a fair shot to keep their families together so they can keep Hawaii strong. Mahalo.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier, we have Mr. Kulbis, in opposition in Zoom.

Thank you, Chair Ilagan and committee members. My name is Brett Kulbis. I'm a 26-year Navy veteran. I live in Ewa Beach. I oppose SB 816. Let's be honest about the intent of this bill is to provide legal representation for illegal immigrants due to the current crackdown by the federal government because if there was truly a need for this service, it would have been introduced years ago.

However, I have other concerns about its broader implications. Immigration law is a federal matter, and allocating state resources to fund this program could divert funds away from other pressing local priorities such as housing, education, and healthcare.

Additionally, this program will create inequities in prioritizing legal representation for one group, while many local residents struggle to access affordable legal services for family issues, housing issues, or criminal matters. Finally, the financial burden on taxpayers must be carefully considered.

The bill appropriates funds without clear limits or a sustainable funding mechanism, raising concerns about the long-term fiscal responsibility. For these reasons, I urge you to oppose SB 816. Mahalo for allowing me the opportunity to testify.

Thank you. We have--we have 69 testimonies in support and--right, hold on for a second--we have 69 testimony in support and also 44 in opposition. I just wanted to make a note of that because we have a lot of testimony for this bill. Would you please come up to testify?

Good morning, chair, vice chair, committee. My name is Joey Badua. I am an immigrant, I am a taxpayer, I'm an attorney, I speak the languages of my Filipino origin, and I am in strong support of this bill. I don't mind paying taxes for legal representation for keikis.

I don't mind sharing housing and employment opportunities to individuals who want to work and be here. And most importantly, I'm a Christian, and the Bible--Deuteronomy 26 and Matthew 25 says that the governments that oppress and maltreat immigrants, that God is watching. So please pass this bill, move it forward, and we shouldn't be afraid of what the legal--federal repercussions should be with this bill. I know we are afraid. Okay, we're not afraid. Mahalo.

Thank you. Is there any other testifiers in the room wishing to testify?

I will. I will.

Okay.

Hi. My name is Mericia Palma Elmore. I'm not here for what y'all normally know me as I'm here for, but I'm here just a citizen and as also a daughter of immigrants, and I'm going to testify. So now you have 70. You said 69, so now you got 70 in support of this bill, and thank you.

Thank you. Any in Zoom? All right. With no other testifiers, any comments, members? Questions? No comments, questions. We'll move on to the next bill. Our first testifier for SB 989--wait, hold on. Give me a moment. Our next testifier for SB 125 is DBEDT, in support, in person.

Aloha Chair, Vice Chair, members of the committee. DBEDT will stand on certain testimony in support.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier, we have Department of Taxation with comments. Thank you. Agribusiness Development Corporation in support in person. Thank you. Tax Foundation of Hawaii on Zoom with comments.

Good morning, Chair, Vice Chair, members of the committee. Tom Yamachika for Tax Foundation of Hawaii. We have basically technical comments. The structure of the law as it now exists is kind of complicated because it's got some nested definitions as we pointed in our testimony. I think it'd be great if the. If these could be cleaned up.

Otherwise, just need to realize that they're there. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. Holomua Collective in support, in person.

Aloha Chair, Vice Chair, Committee Members. Josh Wisch with Holomua Collaborative testifying in support. Largely stand on our written testimony. I'll just note that the purpose of our organization is to help keep local working families in Hawaii by making sure they can afford to stay.

Critical part of that is, of course, making sure that our local businesses and our local small businesses are able to thrive and expand here. And one good way of doing that is enhancing the Enterprise Zone program. And there are a number of really great ways that this bill accomplishes that.

I'll just highlight one because I think it underscores what why it's a good time to provide some updates is that this bill would allow local manufacturers who sell directly to retail to fully engage in the Enterprise Zone program, whereas right now and for decades those folks have had to sell at least 50.1% of their goods to wholesale, which maybe made more sense before the advent of the internet.

But since you have so many local manufacturers now who are going directly to retail, that prohibits them from participating. So that as well as making sure that value added products can participate and also healthcare professionals and healthcare related sectors, I think this could really help out our local business community. Thank you so much for hearing it.

Thank you. We have Hawaii Food Industry Association in support on Zoom. Not present. Is there any other testifiers in the room? And any in Zoom? Members, any comments? Questions? Let's move on to our next bill. We have SB 732 and our first testifier is DBEDT, the State Hawaii Creative Industries with comments.

Good morning, Chair, Vice Chair, members of the committee. Georgia Skinner, Creative Industries standing on our testimony with comments, particularly concerned about the lack of the carry forward as proposed in the measure.

Georgia, if you don't mind, could you expand on your comments and your suggested amendments? Just want to make sure I understand it clearly.

Sure, happy to do so. Thank you. Pull them up. So, one of the aspects, several things have changed in the measure. So, noting that there is a section regarding permitting in the counties and the counties to waive permit fees for the productions that are coming in for the tax credit.

Many of the counties, the county film offices do not necessarily charge currently for this this function and most of the approvals are coming from those agencies within the State Department of Planning, police, et cetera. So, it may have adverse impacts in that case with the city and counties or counties in general.

And then there would be an implementation timeline that you would have to consider if this measure goes forward because that would entail possibly additional rules and things like that that would need to come into play.

We are trying to understand the intent behind this part of the measure because if it is intended to waive fees that are going to other aspects of that county operation, and it impacts their financial picture. So granted a lot of these are very nominal fees also. So, weigh it in that sense when you're reviewing the measure.

The second is the inability to carry forward the 50 million is our cap. Currently we also have a second cap in place, which is a per production cap of 17 million. So, you have two stopgaps already.

The challenge will be that some of those projects that straddle two years, which are many of the larger projects and also local projects here in the state that are coming in for the credit that have spent 100,000 or more, it may impact them as well.

And that is already going to carry a negative message, excuse me, message to our production community both here and on the mainland. We need to get our people back to work and we are at a 50% loss at the moment.

And it's, you know, the picture is, what we understand is that people are holding off, productions are holding off coming here until the session is over and sees what will happen with the credit.

We have had some changes in the credit regarding GET and charging that on payroll companies that are entertainment related that has had a little bit of a blowback actually not a little bit a major kind of setback for us. And then of course just other elements that are uncertain.

So, for example, if you are a studio or a production entity that is planning an indie feature film or a major television series, for the television series, you are probably looking at a horizon of five to seven years.

If you don't know that there's a consistent certainty within the bill, within the measure or within the law which changes this session, then that will cause some concern. I think from my perspective also as a production professional, I've never seen the industry not be resilient and that's kind of where we are today.

It is important that we also look at ways to empower our local, both labor unions and our non-union labor that is mostly comprised of local productions. And those productions relate to some of the elements that we mentioned already regarding the uplift. A 5% uplift was a recommendation. We do have impacts if you'd like to see those.

But the reason for doing that is to ensure that more local people are hired here locally versus people coming from offshore. And that also extends to what has been a discussion in the Senate as well, which is hiring local producers. So, we'd like to see it extend to that.

Thank you.

You're welcome for your testimony.

Moving on to our next testifier, we have the Department of Taxation with comments in person. Thank you. Moving on to Honolulu Film Office with comments in person.

Aloha Chair, member of the committee. Thank you so much for your time today. I can underscore much of what Ms. Skinner just testified to. We are at a critical juncture in the film industry here because the hold off of production coming here coincides with some major shifts in the industry in general.

We have a golden opportunity coming up in the next year or so where major projects that have already been shot will be in the public eye. Lilo and Stitch, Moana, and critically Chief of War. If we are able to address the concerns and the issues in this session. Those kinds of things drive other work here.

We would be missing an enormous opportunity if we don't make those corrections this particular session.

Because when you have those kinds of major projects in the public eye, and I should include Rescue High Surf in that as well, people see that shows shot in Hawaii have substance and character and interest and drive and then they want to create things to come here. If we have barriers to doing that, we're just hurting ourselves.

So just kind of setting the main tone and landscape of how the industry feels. Excuse me. We have lightning in a bottle right now and we're going to let it evaporate if we don't take charge and make those changes. Now.

Specific to 732, there is a particular measure in here that would adjust how we think about streamers and episode counts and that whole discussion that is hyper critical to setting the foundation.

So that Chief of War, which is an epic story all about Hawaiian history that will be on Apple TV in August, they're not sure if they're going to do a season two. It hasn't come out yet. They're assessing what all of these issues are. They're looking at what we're doing here.

We have to make that runway clear for them so that if they're able to greenlight that second season, we can have that shot here and not where we do pieces of it here and most of it in New Zealand. This episode count component will strongly be a positive influence to that thinking.

I underscore the comment about the carry forward the business certainty. When you have studios and writers and companies, they take five or seven years just to develop something and then get it greenlit and then shoot it.

So, the more that we can instill that business certainty, the more that we will be able to create that comfort level that's going to bring our business back.

And speaking about the county stuff in specific, we were analyzing it and just a couple of quick numbers, just from a HPD standpoint, because most of the charges that come on the city level tend to be personnel charges to make things safe, whether it's police on the streets or the fire department on standby, because you're doing special effects and so everything that we receive from production tends to be a reimbursement of those personnel costs.

And for a basic procedural like Hawaii 5O or Magnum PI or NCIS, it's about $25,000 a week that they spend on police services.

And if you draw that out to a network series, you're looking at $1 million a year that the police department would have to account for as opposed to being reimbursed from production for those specific personnel costs.

My fear, if we continue with the county portion, is that if HPD or whatever other service we have cannot meet those needs and has to do overtime or other elements, it's going to jeopardize how we can actually do the permits. So, it's a big concern for us. I'm available if you have any questions.

And in my testimony, I'll just point out that a series of studies that show all about the economic benefits is page two of my testimony. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier, we have the Tax Foundation of Hawaii with comments and zoom.

Thank you, Chair, Vice Chair, members of the committee. Tom Yamachika from Tax Foundation of Hawaii. I'll stand on my written testimony and be available for questions. I did want to add something that would address something that Georgia Skinner from DBED said. She mentioned a get issue regarding the payments to payroll companies as a part of a production.

We note that House Bill 1498, I'm sorry, 1478, that was passed out of this Committee some time ago, had language to address that particular issue and, you know, perhaps that could be revisited. Be happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier. We have the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce and support in person.

Good morning, Chair Ilagan, Vice Chair Hussey, members of the committee. Kiran Polk, CEO of the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce; I did submit written testimony, but I'd like to highlight a few items just that specifically impact West Oahu and the growth we have in other cases.

So, in terms of economic development, I know Georgia Skinner mentioned earlier that the production is down 50%. This is a magazine that we publish on Kapolei, and It was in 2023, and you can look back and NCIS was here, all these key shows were down 50%. And you look in the big picture.

This is, as has been mentioned before, a critical time. There is, you know, we have our academy, Creative Media at UH West Oahu, dependent on feeding our workforce into the industry.

And if we don't do this now, it's just going to tumble effect into our students going and finding work on the mainland and just all the things that we're working so hard to fight against. Another issue that just to point out and direct to. There's a film studio that has been awarded outside of UH West Oahu land on outside of UH to West Oahu.

Again, if we don't have the work here for our work workforce here locally and the support of those, the film industry coming in, it's just going to impact so many other things, including our small businesses on the west side.

We've seen so many of our small businesses, you know, just being able to, to reap the benefits of the film industry being so present in West Oahu. So, I just urgent urge for the consideration of the passage of this bill and I'm available for any questions. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier, we have the Island Film Group in support, in person.

Morning chair, Vice Chair, members of the committee, Rick Galindez for Island Film Group. We submitted a number of proposals to add to this bill. Really a combination of all the other bills that either made it out of Committee or didn't.

I think as the testifiers, previous testifiers have said, you know, we are facing a critical situation in our film and television production community across the US but particularly in Hawaii. The good news is we don't need that many productions or TV series. They'd be very busy here.

But we need more than zero, which is what we currently have. Now the proposals that we have put forward really fall into three buckets. The first bucket would be obviously increasing the incentive both in terms of the cap and the per production cap and the overall cap. And that's just to be more competitive with other locations.

So, the more we offer, the more we're going to get. That may not be possible. I will note that the 2022 read report did show the effect of film and TV production on our tourism industry.

And in 2022 the tax revenue in the tourism industry based on film and TV production was over 121 million, with over half a billion dollars in wages attributed to people coming here because of our production. So, it is kind of a long tail.

The more productions we have here, the more people see Hawaii and more people come here. So separate and apart from the hundreds of millions of dollars that are spent by productions when they come here, we have the visitor industry side as well that we think is a perfect dovetail.

So that's the first bucket is raising our incentives. Second bucket is what has been previously talked about: the general excise tax issue on our payroll companies and on the film and TV industry in particular.

I believe was in 2022, changes were made at the Department of Taxation that increased change the tax status of film and TV production from manufacturing to retail. So, it went from a half percent to four and a half percent.

And then just last year determined that our payroll companies that service the film and TV industry, and these are specialized companies because the payroll for film and TV is very complex. We do not hire our crew members directly with the union issues and the benefits and all that. These are very, very complex payrolls to run.

So, we hire these companies that specialize in it and at this point they are being subject also to the 4.5% retail rate. So, we've just added 4.5% to the cost of payroll for film and TV production.

Now I think there's been a number of bills to change that to either exempt the payroll companies from, from GE taxation and also to move the industry back to manufacturing. So those are things that really return us back to prior to 2022. Not really something new.

The third bucket is something that can be done which will, which is the other thing that is a challenge for our productions is more administrative. Nothing in the third bucket will cost more money, but will make the process more, more fair, more transparent, faster.

We have, we're still waiting on tax credits from 2021, over $5 million of tax credits for not just us, but for our clients, big studios that are waiting to go through the audit process.

We need to speed all that up so that the incentive is really an incentive for people to come here and spend the money and receive the incentive. So anyway, I'm available for questions.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier, we have the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees in support.

Hello, Chair, Vice Chair, members of the committee. TTuia'ana Scanlan, President, IATSE Local 665, IATSE International Trustee. We support this bill and propose amendments to reinstate the language that was struck on paper, page 3 and section 2 sub 2 sub sub n for the rollover.

And just to give you a picture of what this looks like for the investment the state already makes into, into this industry. So, calendar year 2024 was slow as far as the industry goes, very slow in comparison to other years that we have seen a lot of success.

That's for a number of different factors, but just on face value and the numbers that you've seen for $50 million cap 24 and a half a million dollars were claimed estimated claims, and this is in the report to the Legislature from DBED's creative industry division, tax credit union.

$11.7 million then rolled over from the previous year for a total of 36.2 million. If you just look at what happened in 2024, that's 24 and a half million. The industry also generated $20.2 million in tax revenue.

For that investment of $4.3 million of state tax revenue, you get $75 million or just shy of $75 million in household wages, $324 million in economic impact. This is the ROI that you're looking for.

I think in times of uncertainty for federal funding and for other sources of ways to develop the economy in Hawaii, this industry, again, 2024 was the calendar year, was a slow year. If supported adequately and efficiently, this industry can mean so much more to Hawaii's economy as it stands at the bare minimum.

One of the things that we need to support this bill is to see that rollover come back. Because TV shows historically start filming in the fall, they take a short break in the winter, and they continue filming until, excuse me, the spring or early summer.

So, if that project has to get chopped up into two years, it takes away a lot of business certainty, which takes away from a lot of the available opportunities of what work that our members and the agreements that we've negotiated would provide.

These thriving wage jobs, it takes a lot of the away of a lot of the certainty of those folks to feed their families. These thriving wage jobs with the benefits that we've negotiated on a national and an international scale are irreplaceable by other industries.

And if we want to support the working families of Hawaii, these are some of the things that we would recommend we do with this bill. Thank you so much for the opportunity available for questions.

Thank you. Moving on to our next testifier, we have Mr. Ueda in opposition in person. Moving on to Mr. Guizo in support.

Hello, chair, Vice Chair. My name is Michael Guesso. I'm a Member of the Teamsters Local 996. Although I'm supporting this Bill with amendments, I'd like to state as like, echo what Georgia and all these guys are saying about how this industry provides such an economical impact for police officers, local vendors like Mr.

Rosner here behind me, that's been doing this for many years. And the ripple effect goes on and on.

What you guys failed to hear so far is after the writers and actors strike in 2023, I believe, or 2022, the whole landscape of the film industry nationwide has began to change, not to mention Covid from after Covid as well. So the whole landscape started to change.

All the studios started pulling back and tightening the reins and restructuring how everything was working and stuff. Here in Hawaii. We had a golden ticket. Golden ticket. We had CBS, a major studio here from 2010, vested in renting with leases in both state facilities here. So both state facilities was being rented out. You know, we nine.

This is nine months out of the year, episodic show films. Nine months out of the year. So that is majority of all of our labor unions workforce right there that's been working for CBS from 2010. We had a golden ticket in our hand. You know, the last, the last show CBS had here was NCIS Hawaii. So.

And that show was on Monday night, which Monday nights is the big TV night for television. You know, that's where all their hit shows be. That's where the most, you know, their production value comes from. It's NCIS Hawaii on Monday night. CBS, which is the leading network for television.

The ratings, the ratings was good, but still at the end of the season, at the end of season three, it was still on the chopping block because of the restructuring of everything that was going on in the film landscape in. In America and actually throughout the whole world.

You know, it was kind of, you know, it was kind of a shock just to hear that we were on the bubble, so to speak, NCIS Hawaii. And eventually, even though the ratings and everything was good, they still pulled the plug because ultimately it just costs way, way more to film here in Hawaii than any place else.

But, you know, at that time, our state, our city sat by, did nothing, never went to try to talk to anybody from CBS to try to see, like, hey, is there anything we can do? Maybe we can go and ask for General excise tax exemptions.

You know, like how they're doing now for private investors for, you know, nothing like that. We had a Golden ticket in our hand, you know, and, and for.

To get the state as a proprietary investor in this tax credits, you know, to get the maximum ROI on these film tax credit bills, you know, we gotta ensure that they're hiring as much local labor, local vendors, you know, so that ROI, that projected ROI from DBID and the city and the state gets its maximum return.

You know, right now there's language in there and this is the amendment that I wanted to a qualifying production shall provide evidence of contacting all local labor unions servicing Hawaii's film industry, including but not limited to IATSE, Teamsters, SAG-AFTRA, DGA, AFM, IBEW and any other supporting unions before the start date of any productions.

Simple language like Shell. You know, we've ran into situations before where literally like we didn't even find out about productions being filmed here till we see it on television. Like, how does that happen? How do we not even know?

How does the information doesn't get transferred from the state, the city down to our local labor unions to get this return on investment. If the state is putting in these monies as a proprietary investor in these tax credits, wouldn't you want to have them doing their best to try to hire local labor, local, local vendors, you know.

So anyway, that's my, that's my testimony. I'll be here to answer any questions if you guys need me. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there any others wishing to testify in person or in zoom chair? Yes.

Michael Golojuch Jr. President of Pride at Kauai he/him pronouns. We stand in strong support of this Bill. We do ask you that you make the amendments as required requested by.

We hear a lot during the campaign season about diversifying our economy and the film industry and television is one of the things that we hear from all, all candidates. That's something they want to do.

But as you've heard today that unless we actually invest in this industry and investing with these tax credits is the only way we're going to be able to ensure that these products come here.

We sure that we have this money flowing into the state and reminder and that the it's not a one and done kind of thing that once these again, as it's already been stated, but I want to reiterate is that once these films or TV shows come out, it becomes an advertising campaign for come to Hawaii.

And so it's a win, win, win for everybody. You can either have 100% of zero or 85% of. What was that $54 million. I'd rather take the 85% of that. So I encourage you to pass this Bill, provide stability for this industry and show that we actually support the real diversification of our economy. Mahalo.

Thank you. Any others? All right. Any questions from. Go ahead. Thanks.

Could I have deeped, please? Georgia? Thank you very much. So, Georgia, you had mentioned you used the term uplift. I want to make sure that we define that term for the purpose of our conversation.

Certainly the current. Excuse me. There you go. Thank you very much. The current base is 22% for productions that are here on Oahu and all Neighbor Islands are 27%. So it would in effect add 5% to each one of those, which makes us much closer to the competitive US as well as countries, 30% to 40%.

We know that we have to balance this with our state budget. And as you've heard from the testifiers today, it is important that we see this as an investment that has a big return and emphasis. Emphasize again that local hires are really critical. So we, we appreciate those comments.

Okay. Thank you. And can I please have the Honolulu Film office. Thank you very much. You had mentioned in your verbal testimony. Changes to this statute or to this proposed statute that would help with recruiting streaming shows.

Yes.

Can you quantify that for me? Like, what would the. What would be the specific changes that you like to see made?

So I believe the portion of the measure that changes the episode count to eight for streaming series as well as the. I think Island Film Group had recommended that it cover all streaming services and some don't have a subscription.

And I think it was worded so that it was only pay subscription services, but there's a lot of services out there that now don't have a subscription.

So with that, you're now modernizing what the credit is and being able to get a show like Chief of War, who can, after those eight seasons, excuse me, eight episodes, become a new production and be able to then qualify at a greater level to be able to drive a show like that into greater fiscal accountability.

Is there another way that we could word this where we're not using an arbitrary integer? You know.

If I may be allowed to. I know Georgia has spent a lot of time working on the language of this.

Yeah, I think that there can be a change in the definition section, which is, I think, what you're specifically talking about. And I agree with the Island Film Group amendments because the industry changes and as it changes, we have to adapt with it. So be happy to provide the Committee with some recommended Language.

Okay, we'll take that.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, with no further questions, we're going to move on to our last bill. We have SB 1278 and our first testifier is the Department of Taxation with comments in person.

Hello, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee.

Thank you. Moving on to the Tax Foundation of Hawaii with comments in Zoom.

Thank you, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee, Tom Yamachika from Tax Foundation of Hawaii. We will start on written comments and be available for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. The next testifier is the Hawaii Restaurant Association in support in person.

Good morning Chair Ilagan, Vice Chair Hussey and Members of the Committee. The Hawaii Restaurant Association strongly support SB 1278 SD1 because this is something that was given by Federal Government during the COVID to help businesses stay alive. At the same token, keeping the citizens and employees employed.

It was never meant to be something that is a taxable income, and that's basically what the restaurants have done. This is really similar to the PPP grants that was given out to the businesses during that period. And this is. This bill is really to correct the position that the tax. State Tax Department has taken.

And really, I just want to share that during the Senate hearing, the on the Ways and Mean there was a unanimous support that this is something that we should do because this money has already been spent to keep the businesses afloat and keep our employees employed during that period.

I'm available for any kind of questions that anybody might have, but really, we really feel that. Please pass this bill forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We also have Mr. Comer Ford in support.

Hello, folks. I appreciate you hearing me. I represent E and J Lounge Operating Company, which was my company here. It's been in existence for 35 years and basically it's almost gone. And sadly, during the state, during COVID times, people were not aware that the state bars were open throughout the state. Every other island had bars open.

Oahu did not. And because I had something that was nightclubs and they had live music, we were closed. And we were closed for quite some time. We were shut down in March. And in March I had a company that was very successful. Six and a half $1.0 million a year in sales and zero debt.

Within six months, I owed $1.0 million and I had no businesses. They were all gone. We were closed. And we had no communication with government, not with city and county, not with state. Everybody withdrew. So for 15 months we saw nobody. And when we applied for PPP, we had PPP the first time around.

And then using it, I got $650,000 that I used between March and June and we never opened. I paid my employees and I could only pay one month's rent across four bars. When we got through that, finally they let us try to open. Why let us open in June? June of 19th. Why?

Because every liquor license expires on June 30th. So everybody, they were inviting us to come back and to pay for our licenses, which they let us do, which also meant that we had to pay $1.0 million liquor liability insurance, which was costing $100,000 a year.

They let us come back and then they closed us on July 30th. And Mayor Caldwell never ever, ever took a phone call or anything to talk with us. So the remainder of his term we were closed. So my businesses were gone. I applied for what was called the Shuttered Venues Group because they had live music bars.

Shuttered Venues Group became something that was ongoing and developing and never came to fruition. But in trying to do so, we were denied because of the fact that we didn't have fixed seating. So when you were applying for shuttered venues, you could receive no further PPP money. We had zero money. We continued.

Then we applied for the Restaurant Relief Fund, which we never expected to get, but we finally received it in July of 2021. That's a long time to be closed. No business exists that long. I had four bars. I lost two of them. My primary one, Kelly ONeills, which supported most of my corporation, was gone. Why?

Because my landlord expect me to put a restaurant in. I'm a nightclub. I do live music. I've done it for years. It's something that we've lost. In Hawaii, you can't find live music venues anymore. They're gone. Why? Because you couldn't employ musicians for two and a half years.

When they let us open, they said you can be open to 10 o' clock at night. I run nightclubs. It starts at 10 o' clock at night. So for another 10 months we operated with no business. So even throughout that whole period, I got $3.1 million of restaurant relief Fund money.

I'm expected to pay taxes of $160,2 years late and it might have penalties and interest. We have no idea. But for me to continue, I could not continue because there was nowhere to go.

Out of that $3.1 million if you're closed for 15 months, most of that money was gone before I even opened because I had to pay back debts for rent, insurance, everything else.

So I'm telling you, it was so severely done that most of the people I represent also the Hawaii Bar Owners Association, which was a group of about 100 bar owners out here, and believe me, most of them are gone. Anybody who was in live music is gone. So we've changed our whole venue for Waikiki.

Right now I'm open, I have two bars left, Anna o' Brien's and the Irish Rose Saloon. And I'm not making money. I'm making nothing. I'm in debt. I'm continuing to go in debt. So the only thing I can tell you is that my options right now are are to leave Hawaii and just go.

The other thing is to stay here and go broke. So I truly ask you to support this bill because it's needed just out of fairness and I only hope that you guys can do so. I thank you very much for hearing me. I'm available for any questions as well.

Thank you. Is there any tests? Actually, before I ask, I just want to note that there are 33 testifiers in support and that's a large sum of support with 0 opposition and 2 comments. Is there any testifiers in the room wishing to testify on this bill? Any in zoom? All right. Well, Members, are there any questions?

I particularly have a question for Department of Taxation. So reading over your testimony, I understand your concern about automatically issuing refunds or wait for taxpayers to file a return claim. And dotax does not track taxpayers payment on receive RRF funds as these amounts were not separately declared as income on get claims returns.

And dotex is not situated to search out specific taxpayers and determine whether they're entitled to refunds. So amended returns ensure that exemption and refund claims are made by the proper entities and or persons.

And I'm assuming the reason why you're saying that is because these amended returns will help curtail any abuse or waste or any sort of extra refund that would otherwise be sent out. And it'd be also more accurate.

I guess my question lies in when to allow those filers to have an adequate time to be able to also file their amended returns. And I believe you're suggesting that dotax notes that refund claims under this measure would run against a three year statute of limitations.

And dotax requests that the bill be amended to require the taxpayers file a refund claim for funds received in 2021 by no later than December 31st in 2025. So this gives them what879 months to be able to do that paperwork?

Is that adequate amount of time or do they need More time and is there this three year statute of limitations that bar us from extended that time period.

So there's a lot to unpack there. The purpose of our comments, I think is twofold. First on the comments on whether or not we can track the funds and how they're reported and that amended returns need to be filed.

The first purpose of that is to just, I guess inform the public that the Department of Taxation can't actively go out and track these people down. We can't track down the taxpayers ourselves and tell which ones have paid tax on RRF funds and which ones are entitled to refunds.

So the onus is going to have to be on the taxpayers who actually paid to file amended returns. We just don't have the information to actually track them down, contact them, knock on their doors, mailed in things that say, you know, you might be entitled to a refund. We just don't have that information.

So if the taxpayers have that information, then they should be able to find to file an amended return. The second purpose of that is again, as you mentioned, just to ensure that there is a sort of safeguard against fraud and abuse, there needs to be an amended return being filed.

The taxpayer needs to certify to the Department that yes, we paid these amounts, they previously were not exempt, but now they are exempt and we're signing off to the best of our ability that these are correct amounts.

Without that sort of safeguard in place, without an amended return being filed, if we were just to send out refund checks, then the state would have some sort of liability. What if we undercount? What if we overcount? What if we're issuing the wrong amounts of refunds?

There's not really an amount of recourse for us and there's not a system in place for us to do that. The typical system for a refund is the taxpayer has to file an amended return.

That amended return is signed off by the taxpayer, they insure it, and, and if we disagree with them, then we can go through an audit or an appeal. But there is a system in place to at least safeguard and ensure that the amounts are verifiable.

The next part that I think you discussed, if I recall correctly, was on the statute of limitations for filing the amended returns. That is a statute that's in place for all refund claims. So it's not just unique to this, it's not just unique to even the get for all of our returns for refund claims.

We have a three year old statute of limitations. So if you're Filing a claim more than three years after you've paid that that tax, typically that statute is going to preclude you from recovering that refund. Because these refund, because these amounts were paid in 2021, likely returns were filed maybe in 2022.

We're coming up on that statute of limitations. Without amending that statute of limitations specifically for this, the Department is able to make an exception with the current language here. The only caveat is that because our systems are in place, any refund claim that gets filed is filed electronically. There's a get filing requirement.

So if it goes into our system, there's nothing we can do to say, okay, this is an RRF refund right now. Like there's a risk that they're just going to get a ping and a bounce back saying this is an automatic sort of denial of your refund claim because it's more than three years past.

Our testimony tried to clarify that. We're going to have to manually look over all of these amended sort of returns. We don't foresee a lot of refund claims from 2021 being filed anyways because again, it's past the statute of limitations.

But at the same time it's going to require somebody to sort of override that system error or that system ping to go and actually look at the reasons that this refund is being claimed. And for that reason that has to be issued out manually with an override of our current systems.

It's just an added process that we need. We're going to have to assign somebody specifically to handle these claims. We have no problem doing that.

But at the same time we think there should be a limit on taxpayers ability to claim these one, because we are going to have to assign somebody almost exclusively to handle these sort of claims.

And if the taxpayers really want their refund, if it's in their best interest to really claim this, then they're going to be claiming it as fast as possible. So I don't think that a seven month statute of limitations is our statute on refund claims is unreasonable. It could be extended.

But that's just with the caveat in place that that employee or whoever we have working on these claims is going to be diverted from other matters. They're going to be almost exclusively held to processing these refund claims.

Thank you for your feedback. And I also want to ensure that when it comes to the public and receiving information, it's a slow process. I wish that we were very efficient to let all businesses know that they're affected.

Is there A way with the ARPA or RFP funding, is there a way to contact all the recipients of that grant and notify them that this is in existence, to be able to let them know that this reimburse is provided once this law becomes law.

So the recipients of RF funds are publicly available, so we are able to track down who received them. The only problem, like I noted earlier, was we don't know if they actually paid get or not. So when they reported their amounts, we're not sure if they automatically excluded them because they initially thought they were exempt or they.

But the amended returns will help ensure that credibility. And so if we put a amendment there that after notifying all recipients of the Fund and no later than the given time frame that December 31st would provide, I'm not sure how many months that is. Sorry, not good with my math right now.

That would be the time frame to allow them that this is the deadline. And after that there's no other way to get reimbursed. And I'm understanding from you that within this bill there's this three year statute of limitation does not necessarily affect this bill because there's already language in this bill that can exempt that limitation.

That's correct.

Okay, well, thank you for your feedback and we'll do our best to figure out the best solution to help out everyone. Go ahead.

So my understanding is that Hawaii restaurants received about $414 million in funds through this program in 2021. Does that sound correct?

I don't have the numbers off, so I don't want to verify. That's fine.

So that would mean if we were to move forward with exempting that 414, that's about $20 million in revenue, is that right? About 4% of it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm assuming that the Council on Revenues has not anticipated that particular cut to our revenue in their deliberations. You can't speak to that though.

I can't speak to it.

Are you aware of whether other monies that local entrepreneurs received during COVID if those monies were also subject to the same exemptions from Ge? Like for instance, the. Was it the PPP Program?

Okay.

So the PPP Program and other source of funds and grants that were afforded during the COVID relief, those were specifically exempted, but the RF funds were the only ones that weren't exempt. And we really didn't have the legislative authority to exempt those on our own.

As much as we would have liked to have exempt them with a stroke of our pen back in the pandemic. It wouldn't have been proper given the legislative authority in front of us.

So this would be consistent with our previous practice.

So this would correct that. Or at least it would make the RF treatment consistent with the other grants and PPP Forgiveness.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you. Chair. My Chair.

Thank you.

All right, with no other comments or question, we're going to take a recess. Recess.

We are back from recess and moving on to decision making. We are on the top of the agenda on SB989 at this moment. For SB989, the Chair's recommendation is first to add into the Committee notes for a total appropriation of 600,000 for this ibll.

And we also want to amend appropriation section to add another part which is to require the appropriation to also be used for developing project management software to create a portal for applicants to monitor, as well as to apply for designating to simplifying the facilitated application process for small businesses. Is there any comments or questions?

All right, Vice Chair, please take the poll. This is HD1.

Okay, thank you, Chair. So for House, I'm sorry, Senate Bill 989, SD1, we have a. The recommendation is to pass with amendments.

Sorry, Vice Vice Chair. I also want to make sure that the bill is. I know it has a defective effective date, but we're going to also change it to our defective effective date, which is July 1st through 3,3000.

Okay.

All right. Proposal is to pass with amendments. HD1 chair and Vice Chair vote I. Representative Holt is excused. Representative Tam I. Thank you, Representative Tempo I Representative Saad. Representative Matsumoto. Thank you very much. Chair, your recommendation is adopted.

Thank you. Moving on to Our next item, SB 1589. For SB 1589, the chair's recommendation is to remove some language for housekeeping purposes on page four from line eight to 12. This makes sure to keep the sentence that. So from line 8 to line 12 will be removed.

However, we want to ensure that the sentence in that paragraph is kept and that sentence is. Any unexpended and unencumbered funds in the stadium development special Fund shall immediately lapse to the General Fund if the project is terminated. So that language will stay in that paragraph, but the others will be removed.

We also have some technical amendments needed for clarity, consistency and style. And we'll also be changing the effective date to our date.

Okay, thank you, Chairbert. This is for sb1589.st 3 recommendations to pass with amendments noting the excused absence of Representative Holt. Any votes in opposition? Any votes with reservation, Chair, the recommendation is adopted.

Thank you. Moving on to the next item, SB148. The chair's recommendation for SB148. What we want to do is to. We want to create some sort of criteria for big and small events, giving more discretion on safety measures for small events. So there shall be some shall and may provisions to ensure that large events are able to.

They are more equipped to accommodate some of these safety measures. But and these safety measures are from the DCCA testimony. And the smaller events are able to still go on and try to accommodate some of the safety measures, but they are not mandatory.

The other recommendation is we're going to delay implementation to nine months instead of one year, which is the suggested testimony from dcca. We also want to do some cleanup and this is to ensure that amending Chapter 440 that the Commission has jurisdiction over boxing, MMA and all other combat sports.

And that amendment is just to ensure that with this bill with its current form, it does not some sometimes there's some loose language on boxing that is not actually referenced in this bill. And we want to make sure we capture that loose reference of boxing to make sure there's no confusion.

And last, we also want to fix up the Section 8 on DCCA's amendment. This ensures the amateur and combat sports contestants or amateur combat sports contests just clearly defined and there's they already regulate amateur contestants. So this just ensures that continuity in the language. There shall be some technical amendments and needed for clarity and consistency.

And we also will be changing the defective effective date to the House defective effective date. Any questions? Comments?

Okay. Senate Bill 148 ST2, please take the vote.

Yes.

Thank you. Senate Bill 148 ST2 recommendations to pass the amendments noting the excused absence of Representative Holt. Any votes in opposition? Any with reservation. Chair the recommendations adopted.

Thank you. Moving on to SB816 we're going to the Chair's recommendation is to also change the defective effective date to the House defective effective date and also include the amendments from the Refugee Immigration Law Clinic.

And their recommendation is going to require the judiciary to partner with entities capable of training and educating law students and legal practitioners to provide legal representation in immigration proceedings, including deportation defense, asylum applications and other immigration relief process. Vice Chair actually, before we go to the vote. Any questions? Comments? All right, Vice Chair, please take the vote.

Thank you. This is for SB816SG2 recommendations to pass with amendments noting Representative Holtz excused absence. Any votes in opposition? Thank you. Representative Matsumoto, any votes with reservation? Okay. Hearing none. Chair recommendations adopted.

Thank you. Moving on to SB125, the chair's recommending to add on top of the list for enterprise zones and we're going to add businesses that include advanced manufacturing as well as cybersecurity there. We're going to also change the defective effective date to the House effective defective effective date and any technical amendments needed for clarity, consistency and Style.

Any questions? Vice Chair, please take the vote.

Okay. SP125ST2 recommendation is passed with amendments noting Representative Holtz excused absence. Any votes in opposition? Any votes with reservation, Chair, the recommendations adopted.

Thank you. Moving on to SB732. With 732, we're going to bear with me. There's a bunch of amendments.

Would you like me to go?

I'll have. I'll have you do the last one. So with these amendments, I've been working with our Vice Chair, Vice Chair Hussey and together we are supporting these amendments and the First Amendment. What we're going to do is actually. Vice Chair Gohan go on with the amendments.

We're going to accept the amendments from dbed. We're going to accept the amendments from the Teamsters relating to notification of all labor unions. We're going to accept the recommendations of the film of the Honolulu Film Office regarding striking the section on permitting.

We're going to accept the amendments relating to the General excise tax changes, restoring it back to manufacturing and indicating that entertainment payroll companies should be exempt from get.

And given the evolving conversation in our body about striking all tax credits, we're going to provide an alternative investment vehicle for the state to provide capital directly to film productions in the form of equity.

Thank you. Any questions? Comments? All right, Vice Chair, please take the vote.

Okay. SP732SC2HD1 recommendation pass of amendments to HD1. Any votes in opposition? Any votes with reservation and noting the excuse absence of Representative Holt. Chair. Sorry, Chair, your recommendations adopted.

Thank you. We're on the last bill, SB 1278. We're going to defect the effective date to the House date. And we're also going to going to add an amendment to ensure that RRF applicants are contacted.

And once they're contacted, the timer will start on the deadline and the number of months would be be determined on DOE tax amendment of what they propose, whatever months that is to December to December 25th.

That way if dotax takes a while to send out those notifications, then all the applicants will have an adequate time to be able to file. And we also want to make sure that technical amendments are needed for clarity and consistency and style. Any questions, Members? Vice Chair, please take the vote.

Okay. SB 1278 SD1 noting Representative Holtz excused absence. Any votes in opposition? Any votes with the reservation Chair, the recommendations adopted.

Thank you. Thank you, Members. This Committee is now adjourned.

SA.