Senate Standing Committee on Labor and Technology

To order. This informational briefing today is August 19, 2025. It is 10:00 a.m. we're in conference room 309. This is a joint informational briefing with the House Committee on Labor and the Senate Committee on Labor and Tax Technology. Are we good to go for test SARS?

Okay, thank you, Chair. I think just before we proceed, in the event that there's any technical difficulties, we're going to repost and reschedule this briefing.

Okay.

All right. And we're being streamed live on YouTube, I believe.

Okay.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So thank you very much, Chair.

Members that are here, the purpose of this is to have the Office of Community Services, which is an agency under the Department of Labor Industrial Relations, to solicit comment on the new proposed state plan for the Community Services Block grant of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for FY 26 and 27.

Okay, so we'll be hearing from the Department, and I believe the caas will be. Will they be on Zoom? Executive Director? Okay, thank you very much. Okay, so to kick us off, Executive Director, please introduce yourself, you and your staff.

Aloha, Chair Aquino and Chair Sayama and Members of the House Committee on Labor. Excuse me. I'm Ray Domingo of the Office of Community Services.

Before I get started with my brief remarks, I want to recognize Courtney Ho, who was not able to be here, but I mentioned Courtney because she manages our Community Services Block Grant, or CSBG program, the subject of our informational briefing this morning.

I also want to introduce Alan Burdick, who is next to me, who also manages some of our federal grant programs and is very familiar with CSBG.

We are here today to provide your Committee's information about the CSBG program and the plan that OCS will be submitting to the Federal Government in order to continue to receive CSBG funding specifically for Federal fiscal years 2026 and 2027.

As noted in today's agenda, the CSPG plan reflects OCS commitment to work with our Community Action Agency, or CAA partners in each county to meet the goals outlined in the plan. The plan has been available on our OCS website. So if there's anyone in the public who is here or listening on livestream, please visit our website.

As some of you may already know, the CSBG program provides services to low income and impoverished populations, and the services are delivered by the CAA in each county. Briefly, the Plan goals are 1.

Ensure compliance with federal and state requirements through consistent communication with each CAA and the State Association composed of all the CAAS on site monitoring and providing assistance as necessary to address areas of improvement Number two, facilitate linkages between CAAS, my office, OCS and other state governmental agencies to better serve Hawaii's most vulnerable populations and 3 establish and strengthen collaborative relationships and partnerships among each CAA and with other organizations both within and outside the State of Hawaii.

I am grateful to our Community Action Partners who are here today and I believe you may also be hearing from some of the individuals who have benefited from or continue to benefit from the programs they administer.

I submitted my written testimony which I would like to summarize so that everyone who wants to speak in this briefing has enough time to do so. OCS presented the CSBG State Plan which was included with my written testimony for federal fiscal years 2026 and 2027.

In anticipation of your support and favorable reception from our Community Action partners and interested Members of the public, the plan will be Presented to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of our application for Continued CSBG Funds.

The CSBG Program is the flagship of our federally funded programs that helps fulfill our legislative mandate to assist economically disadvantaged and individuals attain self sufficiency. CSBG is a formula based block grant program that supports Hawaii's four community action agencies CAAs in their efforts to help alleviate poverty in our low income communities.

These agencies are the Hawaii County Economic Opportunity Council, the Honolulu Community Action Program, the Kauai Community Action Opportunity and the Maui Economic Opportunity. Under the CSBG act, states must pass through no less than 90% of the CSBG grant awarded to CAAS.

Of the remaining 10%, the state government agencies can use up to 5% for administrative cost with the remaining funds to be used for projects that support the statutory goals of the program including training and technical assistance. States are required to conduct a full on site review of each local CAA at least once every three years.

For FFY 2025, Hawaii received approximately $3,800,000 in CSBG funds. Those funds were allocated through the CAA's as follows. Hawaii County Economic Opportunity Council received about $765,000, Honolulu Community Action Program received about 2.2 million, Kauai Community Opportunity received about 311,000 and Maui Economic Opportunity received about 486,000.

OC has received about 230,300 to pay for personnel and other cost associated with administering the program, including travel expenses for monitoring and training. The CAAs depend on this funding to support the Administration of a diverse set of programs and activities needed to address poverty in their respective counties.

Statewide, the CAAS reported serving a total of 40,980 individuals in FFY 2024. The CAAS will now share highlights of some of their key programs with you during this information briefing. Thank you to our Community Action Agency partners and thank you for the opportunity to present the CSBG program to you.

Okay, I guess we could move on to some of those who are on Zoom the CAAS. Let's start with HCAP. Anyone there from HCAP?

Aloha and good morning Chair Sayama and Chair Atino and Members of the Senate Committee on Labor and Technology and the House Committee on Labor. My name is Robert Piper. I'm the Executive Director and CEO of the Honolulu Reaction Program or HB Staff.

I'm honored to submit my written testimony that you have and with your indulgence I'll go ahead and just kind of summarize some of the highlights of my testimony in strong support of the State Office of Community Services State Plan for CSBG for the Federal fiscal years 26 and 27.

I've been the Executive Director of HCAAF since 2009 and prior to that I served in different capacities on its Board of Directors, whether it was as Board Chair, Finance Committee Chair, Executive Committee Chair, Governance Committee Chair or just as a Member on the board since 1989 to roughly 2006.

My heart belongs to HTAP and I'll tell you why. HTAP is a designated Media Action Service agency for the island of Oahu and our mission is in very short terms foi providing opportunities and inspiration to lower income individuals and families to achieve self reliance.

We believe very deeply and our mission is rooted very deeply in our work that we do that everyone has the right to participate in the economic well being of our community. And I like to always remind ourselves that we don't necessarily get hands out but hands up.

I have yet to come across anyone that we serve in all my years in all the different capacities who said that I don't want to work, I just want free things. People truly do want to achieve self reliance and we tire this as your community action agency on Oahu to do so and to help out.

HCAP is roughly a 22.39 $1.0 million a year operation and I have the privilege of managing a little over 300 staff Members. We are here to serve and simple different capacities, different programs.

We run the state's largest preschool program in Head Start and we have different services that we provide whether it be job training, placement or after School STEM programming in different communities of need.

We also have a weatherization assistance program where we try our best to help weatherize homes of clients who are eligible income wise with solar water heating panels and other energy saving devices and lessons. We also run a homeless shelter out in Kalailoa, Kumahonua Transitional Living Center. We do food assistance and food security programming. We also provide.

We're in the midst of closing out our Hawaii CEAP program which is Energy Assistance program for those who are eligible. We find that all of the programs we do, no matter what kind of direct funding they get, the Community Services Block grant is somewhat the glue for that universe of services.

As all of you may very well know, a lot of grantors prefer to give us money, grant us money to do the work that we do for direct services. CSBG helps us to cover overhead costs, the cost of running these services that oftentimes aren't picked up by direct grants that we may have.

CSBG also allows us to to experiment with different programs and services that we feel we think are needed in the community. We do a regular community needs assessment where we basically survey our partners, our clients, our staff, and we try to stay on top of the different changes in our community.

One of the great things that we have is our tripartite board of directors which is mandated through the CSBG rules that we have three parts to our board of directors. One is our partners from government elected officials that we have. We have a representative from the governor's office, the mayor's office, the City Council.

We also have fantastic representatives from the State Senate and the State House. Another part of our board is the private sector where we have different businesses from the private sector who participate on our governing board.

Hawaiian Electric has been a longtime Member of our board, the bank of Hawaii, the Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce and other different businesses as well.

And finally, what I call the heart and soul of my board of directors is a democratically elected third part of our board, which is made up of folks that we serve in the community or partners who help us serve in the community. They all belong to our district Service center advisory boards.

They get elected as representative off to the board and as you can imagine, we get a lot of great feedback and a lot of the pulses, if you will, of the community straight from that third part of the board. We on an annual basis serve about 20,000 individuals and families in all of our different programs.

As I said, CSBG as in accordance with the CSBG state plan, helps us to provide all these services to all these families and individuals. Otherwise our programming of what we offer would fall apart.

That is why I'm here this morning humbly asking you to support the State Office of Community services fiscal year 26 and 27 state plan for CSBG. And before I say thank you to all of you, I did want to especially thank Director Ray Domingo and Courtney Lee and Alan Burdick and the rest of the staff at ocs.

We have enjoyed and have had the privilege of working alongside with all these professionals who are just as dedicated in serving our communities as we believe we are. I thank you for your time, Members, and I am here for any questions, concerns or observations that you may have. Thanks.

Thank you for your testimony. Next, do we have anyone from the Hawaii County Economic Opportunities Council online?

Aloha. Yes, Chad Hasegal, Executive Director for CEOC.

Please go ahead.

I'd like to thank everyone for this time and this opportunity to testify in favor of the state plan for CSBG fiscal year 26 and 27.

As Mr. Piper stated, continued support and funding with the CSBG state plan offers us not just the opportunity to help more residents in the Hawaii county, but also to cover the vast hockey communities here on Hawaii Island.

We feel that with CSBG, you know, like Mr. Piper stated, that we can cover cost that does not provide us through some funding and program support yet. A good one is our senior farmers market coupon program that we run annually for seniors. They get a $50 coupon booklet of $105 coupons.

Funding is really limited as far as covering operational costs. We feel that that program, although we putting, you know, somewhere between the lines of 70 to $75,000 in our local farmers, in our local economy here for our farmers, you know, with the help of csvg, it helps us continue to keep doing this program annually.

Like a lot of other programs, we do Meals on wheels that provide five frozen meals a week to our seniors in need in various communities across the island.

Our transportation program, you know, the County of Hawaii having its long list of wait list for their participants, we're able to also subsidize some of that to those that are in dire need that need transportation, you know, lack of having family Members take them or having the resources available at that time for them.

So again, I'd like to thank all of you for, you know, for supporting the state plan and the Office of Community Services and all the work they do to get us the help and the funding to continue to utilize this CSBG funding. Mahalo.

Thank you. Next, anyone from Kauai Economic Opportunity?

Yes. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Senator Aquino, Senator Sayama and Committee Members. My name is Maybelle Fujiuchi. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Kauai Economic Opportunity. I have the longest track record with the group. So if you need historical information, I'm really the dinosaur of the group.

I want to thank all of you for being at the hearing today and also invited you to us to speak before you. I think your staff is asking me to start the video. I'm having difficulty with my camera, so hopefully you allow me to just be in the black box right now.

I want to say, as with the other community action agencies in Hawaii across the nation, and I'm just going to summarize the testimony I sent in earlier. Earlier, we're all celebrating our 60th year of services to eligible clients within the island of Kauai. And all the other caps are doing the same over the past 60 years.

And I will age myself by remembering when the law was signed for the Office of Economic opportunity in 1965. Although the names of CSBG per se have been changed over the years, starting with the Office of Economic, Economic Opportunity to Community Services Administration and assortment of other names, the mission has stayed the same.

I want to also say that Kauai Economic Opportunity fully supports the plan that OCS has put together. The plan is well put together. It's well thought of. It takes into account the needs of the state, individual counties, and also a plan for good delivery of services for those who need them.

So I'm asking if you would please support that plan as well as part of. I think Mr. Domingo explained the allocation to different agencies on the amount of the federal funds. We get anywhere between 282,000 to 311,000 per year. That is what we consider our nucleus money.

That nucleus allows us to administer Kauai Economic Opportunity as an agency and then go out to other federal, state, county and private sources for funding based on the needs of the community.

Keo last year was able to garner and obtain $6 million in funding from federal, state, county and private sources to serve the community in a variety of ways. For example, we have emergency shelter, the only one in the island for the homeless. We have transitional shelters. We have Section eight homes. We have Meals on Wheels.

We have weatherization programs. We have mediation programs. We have person and needs programs with specific needs. We have weatherization and others as well. Of note. You know, I want to say that our clients have many times expressed that, for example, in a homeless Shelter.

We've had several clients say that it was so good to be off of the street into a shelter. Although it is a shelter, it's not individual homes, but with meals, with case management to help them find jobs, start savings accounts, and so forth.

It has been a real blessing for the homeless to get out of the weather, out of the brush, and continuously try to keep ahead of those that try to move them to other. Well, move them out of their places and so forth. And then there are many children that are homeless as well.

One of the heartwarming, really sad things that I experienced with one of the homeless families was that the son. And it might not appeal to you, but it appealed to me. One of the homeless sons was a senior. He had a prom date. He did not want anybody to know he was in a shelter, so.

So we were able to get additional private funds to order him his tux, pay for the prom fees, and transport him up to the nice area at the shopping center where he could then meet his date.

And it may not mean a lot to a lot of people, but for a mother that has a child and our grandchildren, I know that as adults, you try to do everything you can to take care of your children, but there are some things beyond your control when you're homeless, and those little things are memorable for a lifetime.

We also have person in needs funding that the clients seem to really relish sometimes, and where we can purchase dentures and hearing aids, things that medical insurance cannot pay for. And I could go on and on, but I will not. I'm just trying to summarize this.

The state office of Community Services and, you know, for Mr. Domingo and Mr. Burdick. I've known Mr. Burdick for a really long time, and Courtney, of course, are very, very supportive in enabling us to do a lot with those that are low income or in the poverty guidelines.

I really appreciate that, and I want to be sure that I acknowledge that.

I want to be sure to also, you know, on behalf of Keo, I want to be sure to stay state that I ask you to support the state CSBG plan for the State of Hawaii as presented by the State of Hawaii Office of Community Services. The plan is vital.

It is, especially now with the culture, so to speak, of the federal program, programs and funding. Now more than ever, it is really important that we know that you will support the plan that OCS put together. We support it, we appreciate it. We recognize it. We think it's a really good plan.

It'll definitely serve those that need I really want to thank you for your consideration of my request. If you should have any questions vis a visa plan or vis a vis Keo programs and I'm, you know, I'll be happy to answer them today if I'm not able to. I will get back to you within 48 hours.

Again, thank you very much. I do echo and ditto the sentiments of Mr. Piper and Mr. Asegawa who preceded me in the testimony. And I'm sure MEO will be in concert with all of us. I close my testimony. I have gratitude and appreciation for all of you and thank you.

Thank you, Mabel. Last but not least, we have the Maui Economic Opportunity. Anyone from meo?

Good morning. Good morning. Chair Aquino and Chair Suyama and Committee Members. My name is Gay Sioonga and I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Maui Economic Opportunity or MEO. I'm testifying in support of the CSBG State Plan for fiscal year 26 and 27. MEO has been helping people in changing lives in Maui County for more than 60 years.

Chartered on March 22, 1965 as Maui County's Community Action Agency, MEO was established as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society Initiative to reduce Poverty in America. The Community Service Block Grant provides the foundation seed funding designed to attract additional resources, build partnerships and fill critical gaps in program funding.

In fiscal year 2024, MEO CSBG allocation contributed to the total agency revenue of more than $55.5 million from federal, state, county and private sources. With these resources, MU assisted more than 30,500 individuals and families touching more than 55,000 miles across lives across Maui County.

The 2023-2024 year was unlike any other as the Maui wildfires of August 2023 brought unprecedented challenges. In the immediate aftermath, MEO staff helped transition transition residents from mass temporary shelters into vacation rentals. We joined caravans to safely transport residents and visitors out of Lahaina.

We coordinate with Mexican and other consulates to help assist with ID restoration and essential documents. In the months that followed, MU continued to provide critical support including housing, utility vehicle appliance, clothing, supplies and employment assistance. Small businesses suffering losses received bridge grants to help keep their doors open.

Key impacts include over 6400 individuals were supported by the Maui Relief TANF program receiving more than $50 million in non recurring short term assistance. 973 individuals received disaster related rental assistance funded by CSBG Disaster funds and private donors. Over 700 small business were awarded over $3 million in recovery grants.

1,400 youth participated in prevention programs avoiding risk taking behaviors. 378 individuals obtained employment through employment and training program. At MEO we believe success comes through consistent efforts, resilience in the face of setbacks and refusal to give up, showing the true power of tenacity through it all.

One constant we can always rely on is the State Office of Community Service and the Community Services Block Grant. These resources ensure that we can respond not only to everyday needs, but also to extraordinary crisis. We respectfully ask that you support the CSBG plan for fiscal year 2016 and 27 for the State of Hawaii.

Thank you for your time and attendance.

All right, thank you. Thank you. You want to start with any questions, Chair?

Thank you very much, everyone, for. For presenting. I do believe we have a number of individuals that may have provided some testimony under hcap. So do we have a number of individuals? We have Joshua Tom that provided written testimony. Is he on not present? Okay.

With your indulgence, Mr. Chair, I can elaborate. We were instructed to have them submit their written testimony ahead of time and that they would not be presenting here in this forum. Okay, so you have those five individuals testimonies, Very happy and very proud of them and their achievements thus far.

But you do have it in written for sir.

Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Piper. So just for the record, we did receive written testimony from Joshua Tom, T. Pele, Randall Shart, Megan Knutson, as well as Pua Lani Domingo. Okay. So let the record reflect that. Okay. All right, thank you very much. I'll defer back to chair for questions. Okay, sure.

Actually, I will let my Committee Members, if you guys have any questions. No. Okay, I will have a question for the Director. The earliest or the previous state plan I could find was from FY20, FY16, 17. Then the state, I believe, received 3.2 million in federal monies for this particular grant.

Has it been relatively consistent since FY17 to now? FY26?

I believe so, yes. Okay. About almost 4 million around there.

Okay. I'm curious, given the changes in the Federal Government, are we expecting any changes in this particular federal funding?

So right now the information we have has been mixed. There's uncertainty in the very near future. Originally, as I understand, around June, it was not in the President's budget. I don't know what transpired after that.

Staff that we are in contact with in the Federal Government have also not been able to provide us concrete information about this particular program and other federal programs. So, you know, we're trying to get as much information as we can. And so it's difficult to do so because we have, you know, they don't even know themselves.

Okay, thank you.

We are just being hopeful.

Okay. I think we all are. For the federal side, right. With hhs, you guys have to essentially go testify or submit your plan. I believe it's September.

Yes.

Okay. I also noticed on HHS's website that they have different state assessments for each state that receives these grants. Hawaii's last assessment, most recent assessment that's been posted, was from 2014. I'm curious, from the federal side, how frequently do they make these kind of assessments? Or is this just a website, maybe out of date?

I believe the website is out of date. I believe that year that you're talking about is just way too far from time. We have submitted more recent plan, so I don't understand why they're not.

It sounds like every three years. Was it? Or is it every an annual reporting?

It's every two years.

Every two years?

Yeah, every two years.

Okay. Thank you. And one final thing. I'm sure I'll have more later on on page eight of your state plan. This is regarding the eligibility entity, overall satisfaction. I think section 3.5 indicated that year one, you had a satisfaction score of 92. Year two, a satisfaction score of also 92. And I realize this isn't.

You guys referenced the American Customs Survey Index, which this figure is tied to. I assume this figure is out of 100.

Yes.

Okay. And what exactly is this figure measuring? You know, who is it asking? Is it asking the recipients of the programs that the CAAs are servicing? Or is it, I guess, surveying the CAAs themselves in terms of satisfaction? If you could just clarify what this figure indicates a little bit more.

I don't have the specifics for that, but. Alan, do you know.

Or we can get back to you. They should. Should be the actual participants responding to surveys, but I'm not sure.

Okay. No, I'm just curious. We can get back to you if you'd like. Thank you. Because 92 sounds like a great number. Exactly. Just want to make sure that we're measuring the right thing. Okay, Perfect. No further questions for me at the moment. Chair.

So, Director, how often do you communicate with your federal partners?

Federal.

Yes, the federal grantors. Because, you know, you had mentioned that you guys are getting mixed signals about future funding from your federal partners. How often do you communicate with them?

The last time was back in June, so that's the latest. And then other information is maybe through emails that we belong to as a group, and I belong to a group of my federal counterparts from other states. And also it has individuals from the federal side who sometimes gives information, but it's not very concrete information.

So that's another source of our information is through these group messages.

Both from your federal partners as well as your colleagues from other states. Yes, yes.

The sentiment from all the other states, by the way, is just everyone is very uneasy about the immediate future of these federal funding sources.

Okay. In terms of eligible entities under Section 5, how are the CAAS determined? How are they. What? How are they determined? Do they go through a certain process and that's how they're chosen? It's by way of maybe how large their organization is, whether they can, you know, upfront the money. Because we understand that the grant is reimbursable.

Correct. So I just wanted to know, like, how are these eligible entities determined?

They were established way back in the 1960s. Okay. It's a situation where under the Great Society programs of the Lyndon Johnson Administration, a statute was enacted that opened it up for community action agencies to be created. They were then people then stepped up and it was.

I'm not sure of the details, but basically it was determined that at least in Hawaii, it would be one community action agency per county. Once they were established. They basically have been locked in to the entire system over the course of literally 60 years at this point.

And the community action agencies also are recognized in, for example, the weatherization. The statute that creates the weatherization program, Weatherization Assistance program, and a similar program out of federal dh. The weatherization program is a Department of Energy program. There's a very similar program called liheap, Low Income, I forget Energy Assistance Program that is in federal dhs.

And both of them have very similar goals of assisting low income people in dealing with electric bills, basically. And I think the community Action program also is. Community action agencies are also basically locked in to other federal programs. And so they've been there all along. There is a provision in the community action, the community services statute.

It's been modified most recently in the mid-1990s that you heard, for instance, Mr. Piper talking about the Tripartite Board. That's something that is in the federal statute. In other words, a community action agency in Order to continue being eligible for CSBG funding and other funding from federal sources has to maintain certain internal levels of responsibility.

Shall we say that they have to have a tripartite board part participants, private sector and government officials are the people who are on the board of each community action agency. And there is an entire series of the process of the CSBG that we're dealing with right now. There are also monitoring requirements and so on and so forth.

There's a lot of back and forth between the community action agencies and the state agencies, such as office of Community Services and the federal agency in. It's called the Federal Office of Community Services in Department of Health and Human Services that provides over oversight over us and over the community action agency.

So there's this up and down, back and forth all the time. And community action agencies can be defunded if they do not meet these requirements and pass them the inspections and monitoring visits. The feds monitor us, we monitor the community action agencies. And it goes like that.

So it is possible for community action agencies to, as I say, be deregistered as it were, taken out and possibly replaced. Although as practical matter, it doesn't happen.

We've had a couple of rough spots, 10 years is so ago with one or two of the agencies, and, you know, we get sometimes federal assistance to Prop them up and make sure that they're functioning effectively.

Okay. So basically it is under the program, it is the community action agencies that deliver the services. So there I think we might be thinking along the lines, Senator, that, you know, your question was, how are they? How are they selected? There's no release.

There's not none of that process, because under the program, it has to be a community action agency that has to deliver the service.

Okay. And the ones that we have currently designated are the only community action agencies. Are they the only caas designated? Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

And they've all been in existence since the 1960s, these four agencies that we work with.

Okay, thank you, Jerry. If I could follow up on something there. So you mentioned, or I guess the plan also mentions, like monitoring corrective action and fiscal controls when there are incidents that require. Or I guess I should start with, have there been any incidents that have required corrective action in the past fiscal year?

I would say eight or 10 years ago, there were some corrective action that had to be undertaken with one of the agencies.

Yeah.

Okay. But none recently? No, during my time now. Okay. And following back up on the selection process. Right. We've got some clarity that there are only these four CAAs in existence in the State of Hawaii. Has there.

Is there a process or has there been an attempt by any other organization to be designated as a CA in Hawaii?

Not in recent years.

Okay, thank you, Director.

Rcaas required to perform audits as a condition of the Fund. Yes, there are auditors. Okay. And they provide those audits to ocs. Okay.

Okay.

Chair Members, you guys have any other questions? Nope. Okay.

Let's take a brief recession.

All right. Calling this informational briefing back to order. Just want to say a few words, really thank you to the Executive Director, to staff, to all those who testified online for the caas. Clearly, you know, this funding does have a large community impact throughout the state. And so, you know, my hope is that. Right.

That we would be able to continue the great work that we've already been doing. Hopefully the funding will continue. But really appreciate the detailed report for this Committee, Chair.

Thank you, Chair. I echo the same sentiments as Chair Sayama. I think moving forward, like to, you know, wish the Office of Community Services well. Good luck on the. And keep our fingers crossed that the funding will continue.

We see thousands, based on the testimony we received from the caas, as well as the five individuals on behalf of hcap. There's tremendous impact here, positive impact over the course of time. So it would be very unfortunate if we see any changes in the federal program.

But we wish ocs as well as the caas, the best of luck. If there are any updates that you folks receive from your federal partners, we'd like to be briefed on that as well. Okay. But thank you very much for being here.

This hearing is adjourned.