Senate Standing Committee on Government Operations

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on this April Fool's Tuesday, 3 o' clock in room 016. We are convening our joint committees with Committee on Energy and Intergovernmental affairs and our good friends from the Committee on Health and Human Services. This hearing is being streamed live on YouTube.

If we have any kind of technical difficulties, we will post a public notice as to our next reconvene time. Would like to say that for those who are testifying, we're going to limit your testimony to one minute. We have a number of items on this. Actually two. Two sets of resolutions on this agenda.

They are Senate Concurrent Resolution 58 and SR 42 urging Counties to install special needs recreational playground equipment in parks, in playgrounds. On our testifiers list we have Kirby Shaw from the Disability and Communication Access Board.

Good afternoon. Elizabeth Delovio with the Communication Disability Access Board testifying on behalf of our Executive Director, Kirby Shaw. We stand in support of our written testimony and we're available for questions. We do have our Facility Access Coordinator here with us as well to answer any questions on the accessibility guidelines.

Thank you for joining us. Daintree Bartoldas.

Good afternoon, chairs and vice chairs and Members of the community. My name is Samea Gorham. I'm an intern on the, with the Hawaii State Council on Developmental Disabilities. I'm here on behalf of my Boss, Daintree. We do want to stand in support in our testimony.

However, while we do support the measure, we respectfully request replacing special needs on page 1, line 21, line 25 and line 29 with access and functional needs. The term access and functional needs is the appropriate language when referring to people with disabilities, particularly in emergency planning and service delivery.

There is nothing special about a person needing access to communication, mobility or medical care. It's about ensuring equitable access and functional support for full participation in community life. Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

Thank you for joining us, Louis Ortishek.

Yes, thank you. Good afternoon, chairs Members. I'm Lou Orischek, Director of the Disability Rights center and Senator Wakai. I wanted to thank you in your office for scheduling this resolution and Senator McKelvey for introducing it. It might seem like a small point, but if you think about what happens, the whole point of the disability movement is inclusion.

And that starts when you're born and when you're a young child. And if you think about what happens when kids go out at recess and they play and somehow you're the kid in the corner and you can't play, it's traumatic at a young age and it impacts everybody.

And so there was a House Bill that was introduced and that came over to the Senate and it wasn't heard. It occurred to me, I mean, honestly, this is a very technical, complex area with overlapping jurisdiction. Some are parks, some are recreational facilities, some belong to the county, some are DLNR.

So the thought that Decab and I had was that it would be really helpful potentially to keep the issue alive in the interim and maybe have a working group if we can get everybody together. And let's figure out what is this going to cost, what's feasible, because I understand that...

Thank you, Mr. Ortishek.

Anyway, thank you.

Jessica McCollum, I believe, is joining us via Zoom.

Aloha, I'm the founder of Autism Moms of Kona. My name is Jessica McCallum. I support this initiative. I do want to also compliment what Daintree was saying in revising the language and the name for special needs. I also recommend an amendment not only to include those that are physically disabled, but also those that are developmentally and intellectually disabled.

There are a number of different physical activities and movement activities that will highly support those on the spectrum and with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And then reinforcing our last speaker, it also encourages inclusion.

So it establishes empathy not only for those children without disabilities, but it encourages our families who tend to isolate inside the households to integrate into the community and develop those relationships and social skills with their peers. Mahalo.

Thank you, Jessica. We have Nicole Walsh.

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. I am a Master's of Social work candidate at Hawaii Pacific University and I'm also a research assistant at the Pacific Disability Center. I'm in support of this measure as well. I believe that this measure will lead to further empowerment of individuals with disabilities and inclusion emphasis.

So thank you for letting me speak on the measure.

Thank you for joining us, Nicole. Is there anyone else wishing to testify on these two resolutions, if not Members? Any questions?

Chair yes, Senator Richards, I apologize for being a little late. Could you come back up, sir?

Thank you, Senator.

I apologize for being a little bit late. You talked about let's figure out how we can, what this is going to cost and go forward with that. Could you expand just a little bit on that, please?

Well, the concept that Decab and I had discussed, as I say, to be perfectly honest, when the Bill was heard, there were, I mean, there was a fair amount of confusion about which entity is in charge of what, who's in charge of parks, where does what's under DOE, what's under the counties.

So I think it was a little confusing. And so, especially since the Bill was not heard, it seemed to me that if we could just get some relevant stakeholders together and try to figure out what... I don't know what the cost is, but there are people who do know and what's feasible.

I understand that, yes, ideally, we would love to have every playground, have every accessibility, but how much is that? So what could we do? What makes sense? What would be a good start just to get something going. And that this, it occurred to Decab and myself that this would be a good vehicle to have.

I mean, the Legislature could always do an interim work group, but this would formalize it, give it a little bit of structure where the stakeholders could meet and then presumably file a report, come back with some analysis. So you folks could give that some consideration next session.

Okay, yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Because I came up from county and we struggled with that. And I was reminded one of the council Members had a son, special needs son, and his son's name is Luke. Luke taught me a lot.

He taught me that I can live in his world, but he can't necessarily live in mine unless we make some accommodations. And so that's what you're getting at.

Well, exactly. And I, I mean, I think.

I mean, part of the irony is, I mean, it's not only better for the child with a disability, it's really better for all of us because instead of us growing up as children thinking that, oh, they're somehow weird, they're over there all of a sudden, hey, they're playing with us, they're kind of doing the same thing.

So we all benefit from something like that.

So I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Jarrett. Thank you.

Anyone else with questions? If not, the two chairs have conferred, and we'd like to just move straight into decision making. We're going to offer a number of amendments. The first being, we'd like to take the Disability and Communication Access Board amendments. They offered three. We'd like to take all three of their suggested amendments.

The Autism Moms of Kona submitted requested amendment. We'd like to take that, which is a description of including developmentally and intellectually disabled youth in the description on lines 13 through 16. We'd like to take Tina Marie Curus suggested amendment.

And we'd like to take amendments numbers 1 through 6 in her submitted testimony also make technical, non substantive amendments to this measure. So those are the suggested amendments. Any discussion? If not Senator Chang? I vote yes.

Chair's recommendation for SCR 58 and SR 42 is to pass with amendments. [roll call] The recommendation is adopted.

Thank you.

So for Health and Human Services, we are just awaiting one more person for quorum who is coming down from the second floor. But Chair's recommendation. So we are ready to proceed. Chair's recommendation is the same as that of Chair of Economic, EIG. Thank you very much. Energy and Intergovernmental Affairs. We have more. Do pass with amendments.

Vice Chair for the vote.

Voting on SCR58, SR42. Recommendation of the Chair to pass with amendments. [roll call] Recommendation is adopted. Chair.

Great. Thank you.

We are adjourning this Joint Committee.

Thank you for your patience.

We're convening the Committee on Energy and Intergovernmental affairs and our good friends from the Committee on Government operations on this April 1st at 3:01or so. Yeah. In room 016. This hearing is being streamed live on YouTube. If there's any kind of technical difficulties, post a public notice as to when we will reconvene.

We're going to ask that the testifiers limit their testimony to one minute. We have a pair of resolutions on this agenda. They are Senate Concurrent Resolutions 163 and Senate Resolution 132, requesting the counties to adopt flexible setback requirements for state buildings and facilities to enhance land use efficiency and public service delivered.

On our testifiers list we have, Ted Cafalis from Grassroots Institute, has submitted testimony support. Frank Schultz, an individual testimony and support. Is there anyone else wishing to testify?

Thank you, Chair Gordon Wood, Public Works Administrator for the Department of Accounting and General Services. We offer our support for these resolutions. I'm available for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wood. Is there anyone else wishing to testify on these two resolutions? If not Members, any questions for Mr. Wood? Questions, if you don't mind.

Yeah, just. Just perfect. Okay sounds good. I don't know what.

We conferred, talked at length and...

Don't know what a technical amendment to a RESO is, but where are we going?

Just crossing a T so it doesn't look like an L. The chairs have conferred. We'd like to move these two resolutions out with technical non substantive amendments. Any discussion? If not Senator Chang? I vote yes.

Chair's recommendation for SCR163 and SR132 is to pass with amendments. [roll call] The recommendation is adopted.

Okay, thank you very much, Committee on Government Operations. Let's set back moving this as a Senate Draft 1, shall we? Recommendation is a Senate Draft 1. I vote yes.

Okay. Voting on SCR 163 SR 132. Chair's recommendation is to pass with amendments. [roll call] Chair, recommendation has been adopted.

Okay, thank you. This concludes the hearing.