House Standing Committee on Finance

Aloha. We are convening the House Committee on Finance today on January 122026 at 1:00pm for the purposes of our budget briefings. We're joined today by the State Department of Health. And whenever you're ready, you may begin.

Good afternoon, Chair Todd, Vice Chair Takanouchi, other Committee Members, Finance Committee Chair Takayama and Vice Chair Liloy. Thank you for having us today and the opportunity to present on our budget requests. I am joined here today at the table with First Deputy Val Kato.

And then behind me, we have, let's see, Acting Deputy Director for Behavioral Health, Dr. Courtney Matsu, Deputy Director for Environmental Health, Kathy Ho, and Deputy Director for Health Resources Public Health. And we have filled the seats with lots of Department of Health staff. So I appreciate their being here and support.

Also want to recognize all of our ASO staff who contributed to all the tables and all that work as well. So thanks, everybody. We're in uncertain times. There is such a thing as this World Uncertainty Index. And the spike is the level of uncertainty that has occurred in the past year. And that has been our context.

In particular, there's been federal policy uncertainty that has impacted the work that we do. And it really began with the domination or confirmation of Secretary Kennedy. And a lot of this work has involved science and public health, particularly regarding vaccines. But other recommendations.

There's just a timeline there of some of the highlights that I pulled from a timeline of the Kaiser Family Foundation. He has made certain claims that have affected the science of what we do. He has claimed acetamin is associated during pregnancies associated with autism. I'd like to share that the evidence indicates it is not.

He has made claims that vaccines may be associated with autism. Again, I'd like to reiterate that the evidence indicates that that is not the case. No new evidence has been provided regarding any of these claims that have been made that are on this slide in this past year with uncertainty has been associated with the decline in trust.

This is also from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Emergency has been reported in this building. Please cease operations and leave the building utilizing the nearest exit or fire exit stairway.

Do not use elevators. Do not use elevators. All right, go for it. But just in case there are any litigators out there, that is not my recommendation, like, just do whatever you want. Do your thing.

All right. So this poll compares from January of 2025 to June of 2023. And you see a decline in trust. People still continue to trust their doctors the most, but even the trust in their own personal doctors decline and Then the circle at the bottom is trust in state and local health officials.

And you've seen a steady decline in that next slide. This goes into a little more detail about the level of trust. Again, the highest level of trust is in one's personal provider.

And that just highlights the importance of having a usual source of care, the value of primary care, that it seems to be the most trusted source that people go to for information. What's interesting is become a political issue, and you can see that where they're only about 54% of people trust their local health Department, state health Department.

And it's interesting to me that 80% of those who identify as Republican trust Secretary Kennedy almost as much as their health care provider. So that's a challenge for us where we are seeking to be trusted by the entire public and all that we serve.

And as there's misinformation, disinformation out there, it just becomes an increasing challenge for us to be a trusted source to provide information that the public can rely on. There's also been resource uncertainty from the federal level.

Most notable was in March when there was an abrupt rescission of COVID supplemental funding that impacted, or would have impacted 87 filled positions of ours and $9.8 million of federal Fund. Basically, we received notification that the funding was no longer available, essentially effective immediately.

There was a substantial amount of work done to understand the impact contingency plan through litigation and other efforts. There was a preliminary injunction, and eventually those funds remained available. But how we access funds through the federal system, the effort required, the justification required, has been a significant additional burden, which is continued to this day.

There have been other significant reductions in force. And when there was a Federal Government shutdown, there was additional terminations of federal employees, and particularly at the cdc. At 1.0 it was reported that it was down a third of its staffing.

Under the lawsuit, some staff have returned, but it's not entirely clear to me at this point what staff have returned, what programs are fully staffed or what that plan is. There's still a lot of uncertainty as we are trying to anticipate what the federal funding impact may be going forward.

I did review the Senate subcommittee's markup and the House subcommittee's markup of bills that would impact us. The Senate was pretty much flat to 2025, but the House version had some significant reductions. Those items on the right of the screen have been particularly noted, have been particularly identified as areas that are targeted for decreased funding.

And when we look at that information and other information, policy positions that have been communicated from the Federal Government. Essentially, we feel all of our federal funding is potentially at risk. But these are the items that we consider to be at highest risk because again of federal policy positions.

And the total of this is about $18 million in 80 staff. We have not been notified that the funding has been cut as of this time. So we do not have in our budget, in the governor's budget, General funds to supplant lost federal funds. But these are the areas that we would identify to be essentially high risk.

As you can see when those funding dates run out. I know you know this, but just to kind of depict it graphically, the continuing resolution continues through January. And what I showed on the previous slide is the federal budget for the current federal fiscal year. Most of our funding is actually from a previous federal fiscal year's appropriation.

So we seem to be pretty okay through the rest of this current state fiscal year. The one notable exception which was impacted in particular during the shutdown was the WIC funding. And that was another area where we did quite a bit of maneuvering, transferring funds to ensure that the WIC program continued uninterrupted.

So there does seem to be WIC funding through the current fiscal year. So I think we're okay. But we're here talking about State fiscal year 27, and it's just really unknown at this time, with a lot of potential variation.

Once we see what the Federal Government does if they pass a Bill to impact health and human services through the current fiscal year, that should give us a better sense of where we'll be for the next federal fiscal year. But just to say that we just don't know for sure.

Despite all that uncertainty, I have tried to reassure the Department staff that our mission and vision have not changed. Our work has only become more important. Our mission continues to be to protect and promote the physical, psychological, environmental health for the people of Hawaii. And we follow the CDC's model of the essential public health services.

I've implemented the strategic framework that we use to inform our decisions and some of our requests. The foundation is really optimizing operations with the three core pillars of trust, capability and effectiveness. And then across is really that overarching departmental strategic public health policy. And I'll go into a little more detail with this.

So it's been a prioritize to optimize operations, to change how we work, to really become more efficiently, work more efficiently. One of the things we held this year was administrative summit.

We had about 250 staff come to really be sure that people understood our policies, procedures and get feedback, see where we need to improve what we have control over and how we operate.

We continue to convert from paper to electronic forms and utilize E signature which is particularly beneficial for our neighbor island work, not having to have things be sent here by snail mail. We've also consolidated compliance efforts including travel requests, UIP requests, ensuring we're complying with Sunshine, HIPAA and ADA and also with hearings into a new compliance office.

And we've simplified delegated reorganization process where we can. We've leveraged technology. We're improving payment processing for P cards. Having converted that to electronic process, we're about to launch an HR portal through which staff can submit HRD1's requests to streamline that process. More transparency.

There's a new environmental health training platform and we even piloted a chatbot on our website which is down right now. But we learned from that experience on how to improve the chatbot which hopefully again to help the public navigate our website and get more information within some of the optimizing operations was filling our vacant positions.

And I'll talk about recruitment in the next slide.

Retention.

We appreciate the Legislature and its work that led to Act 291 and allowed us to do our hiring innovation for rapid employment or hire a pilot. Through this pilot, we've hired 38 candidates. It's taken an average of 95 days from when the posting occurs to when the individual starts.

So you think of all the steps that have to occur. The posting has to be up, it's got to come down, receive the applications, do the interviews, make an offer, accept the offer and a start date. All that's occurring in 95 days. And we find that to be very successful.

When we contact people because it is more timely, they've not yet found another job or still interested in the position. But it's not without its downside because in this process we take all applications before verifying minimum qualifications. That means some applications are received and people are interviewed who don't qualify for the position.

So there is, you know, if you want to consider that some wasted work. So three individuals who were selected were found not qualified for the position. We also did a number of recruitments where no one was selected for this position. So that is kind of that waste in the process. We continue to learn and refine.

But for the ones that we have hired, we have gotten good feedback. Look at our overall vacancy rate. It's nearly 30% for the Department. For civil service positions across the Department is 27.6%. You can see how it varies by Administration. We have 3551 positions, of which 3117 are civil service. 2,373 are filled.

Of our 3551 total, I'm sorry, 2373 are filled over 3117 civil service positions. Right. With a 27.6% vacancy rate. We have a higher exempt position vacancy rate. A number of those exempt positions were created for special projects when there was federal funding. And some of those exempt positions are still on the books, even there's no longer funding.

So that's why that rate is higher. So I just encourage you that we're still struggling at about a 2728% vacancy rate. Given our current fiscal situation. I understand people are looking at the vacancy savings. So we, for example, I think last year we had about 33 million in vacancy savings.

But we that was offset by 22 million in overtime. We had additional cost of contracts and we did end up lapsing about $8 million from vacancy savings. So just for context that when we have those vacant positions, we still need to do the work and that's either done by overtime or contracts.

But we did lapse about 8 million vacancy savings. Retention is another priority. We need to keep the ones we have. We had a branch chief summit, so we rely on our division chiefs very much and appreciate their leadership. But we wanted to engage that next level of leadership and also help develop them.

So many one attendees attend that we've established a multi sector onboarding program for new employees to get them more engaged, create a cohort, have them feel more connected with the Department when they start. Begun some regular regularly scheduled lunch and learn programs with a variety of topics. We get pretty good turnout actually for more operational type topics.

Maybe 150 to 200 staff joining for those. We're also trying to support the well being of our staff and we don't get as much turnout on those. Okay, talk about trust. The two words that kind of have come up the most for me in this past year are uncertainty. And trust me, we understand really this environment.

It is essential that we continue to work to earn the public's trust. One of them is community engagement. And I preach that to the staff behind me. We held additional training. We brought a consultant come in and train 65 managers in community engagement. Community engagement is not us saying here's what we want to do.

We will engage the community so they can do what we want them to do or we need them to do. Community engagement is that the Community feels we can help them with their challenges and their problems and they invite us feeling that we can help them.

And they see us as a trusted source so that we get invited to the communities. They know we will listen to them and we will also listen not just to their problems, but to their solutions and see how we can assist. That's where I would like to go. Voting trust also involves communication.

We hired a contract, did an assessment of our website making some improvements right now, some cleanup and then we're going to need to revamp our website quite a bit to make accessing our information more easy. We've increased our social media presence quite a bit. On Instagram, for example, we've increased.

Our followers have increased by about 50% so now it's at 15,000 in a state of nearly 1.5 million folks. So we would be grateful for you to follow us and amplify some of our messaging so we can get our information out there. Those are all the ways that you can follow us.

Our content is hootsuite evaluation and our performance score is actually pretty good. We can certainly improve, but we need our message to reach people and we want your help. We have lots of data. We really try and be transparent, make data available to the public. We have all kinds of dashboards.

Granted it may be difficult to locate some of this on the website. We need to work on that when we do our improvements. But this is an important area for the again the public to understand. There's lots of information out there to inform what we're doing. Okay. As we move into some selected highlights just by our Administration.

So for behavior health, our adult mental health division received three year accreditation. So that's a great thing for children and adolescents. We increased implemented a new contracting for more of a value based payment to incentivize staff retention and adherence to evidence based practice. Also expanded crisis after crisis after services.

Now up to eight weeks of increased monitoring and as needed linkages to community services. With the opioid settlement money, one of the things we've done was distribute over 40,000 naloxone kits on our right again.

Another one of those public dashboards is how much opioid settlement money we've received and have spent and what we spent it on that's all publicly available. Trying to advance the care of individuals with developmental or intellectual disabilities. There's a new training program and over 100 individuals have been awarded this professional certification as a result of that effort.

And another significant project was modernizing our electronic health record for environmental health as the debris moved from the temporary site to the permanent site. We were continually involved in monitoring that air monitoring and being involved in the closure of the temporary disposal site. We again had posted all of our testing online.

But the US Army Corps of Engineer they had done some testing and that data had not been readily available. So we worked out with them that we received their data and we added their data to our website too. So property owners can go onto our website and see the testing the Army Corps did on their property.

There's a pilot on Maui about discarding electric vehicle batteries because they're maybe lithium based. You can't transport them off island. So this is a way to kind of deactivate those batteries to be able to dispose to transport them to dispose them on the mainland. Water safety so this is from environmental perspective partnering with the counties.

Put more signs, more awareness. Put a QR code that will go directly to our advisory so people can know if the water's safe or not to go in. Continue our food monitoring expanded that some pesticide testing.

We've added dvc I'm sorry the deposit Beverage container program recycled more than 500 million containers this past year and vector response for things such as dengue, malaria. So other case other conditions that can be transmitted by let's say mosquitoes or rats. We respond to those to prevent further spread in suspected cases.

Public HEALTH A lot of public health is education and awareness. These are just two key campaigns. We continue to also advocate for other policy change to reduce the over consumption of sugar sweetened beverages and also to continue to counter tobacco industries marketing of tobacco products to the youth and to continue challenges of flavored baby products.

Legislature approved the establishment of a viral hepatitis elimination program. We've been going to work on implementing that. We've also modernized our immunization system and electronic disease surveillance system for the medical cannabis program. They developed and offered continuing medical education to engage providers on how to better incorporate cannabis into the care of their patients.

There have been some two notable things at the federal level just on cannabis and hemp. The the President had issued an Executive order directing the review of the rescheduling of Cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3.

The impact of that primarily would be the use of the banking system that currently is not allowed for our dispensaries or those involved in the cannabis system. That's the most significant one and the others it would also allow more funding for research. While more states have done more medical cannabis and research is coming out.

We are seeing more of the harms of cannabis. But this would allow further research. The other significant change was regarding hemp. When they passed a continuing resolution, a provision was added that would limit intoxicating hemp products beginning basically November 26th is when it would take effect.

Last year you gave us a, I believe additional funding or support for oral health. Excluding our military bases, we are the only state that has zero community water fluoridation. So we have particular challenge for oral health among our keiki here in the state. So programs such as this are extremely important. We appreciate your support of them.

And then lastly, you gave us funding to support reproductive health and family planning. We have awarded contracts to ensure and support access to services statewide. For that, we've also supplied a secured a four year supply of mifelpristone. I'm sure there'd be any disruption at the federal level. Okay, moving on to our budget.

So for our top line request, compared to fiscal year 26, our fiscal year 27 supplemental has increased by 10%. Only 1% is General funds. So we're asking for a $16.2 million increase in General funds compared to fiscal year 26. The other significant increase is in really. The rest is special funds.

We have about 110 million increase in revolving funds, $35 million request increase in other special funds. We're not requesting any new positions. One thing to call out between 26 and 27 is the decrease in end funds. That $17 million decrease in end funds as a result of the end of one of those Covid supplemental grants.

So it didn't terminate early, just end it. There's also about an 800,000 decrease in our immunization core funding. So that was the decrease in end funding. We have four General Fund requests and I'll go into each of these in more detail. The Department is responsible for statewide operations of emergency medical services.

In this past year, we've deployed a new system to integrate the clinical data across all 911 EMS providers and trauma centers. This allows real time exchange of information and better patient care. Over 20,000 records have been shared this past year.

And what's also particularly key about this is the field providers get feedback from the hospitals and that can hopefully help improve patient care. Updated trauma registry across all the hospitals you can see. Began publishing quarterly quality indicators and continued our injury prevention efforts, including suicide prevention, water safety, and created a new E mobility injury surveillance system.

Okay, so each county is slightly different in how EMS is managed. For Honolulu county, they operate it and they do their billing and they keep what they Bill. Previously, you know, the state paid the county for their services.

And then we titrated the amount of money provided to the county to support them where eventually the subsidy had stopped. But this $3.5 million was reinstated by statute. So they received $3.5 million per year out of the EMS Special Fund for Hawaii County. We contract with the county.

It's county operated, but the state does the billing for Hawaii and Maui. The state contracts with a private provider to provide the ground transportation in those counties and the air trans 911 air response on Maui. You can see the ballpark of the money we spend on those EMS services. It's about $72 million a year.

We do have an EMS Special Fund that I mentioned. We received this past year $6.5 million from the motor vehicle registration. There's a $5 of each registration gets deposited into the EMS Special Fund. 1.25 cents of each cigarette is a tax that gets deposited to our special Fund as well. We can receive a maximum of 8.8 million.

But because the tobacco use has gone down, we received 4.9 million that was deposited. So we had 11.9 million total in EMS Special Fund. And that goes into the special Fund. As I mentioned, all those services where we do the billing. Last year we collected about $30 million from billing and $30 million lapses to the General Fund.

It does not go into the EMS special Fund.

Okay, let's go. Now within our EMS, because paramedics and EMTs are county employees by law for contracting for those services. Right. It's our understanding, it's been our practice that our contracted EMS and paramedics would be paid comparable to if they were public employees. So when that union negotiates pay raises, we incorporate them into our contracts.

Those negotiations usually occur in about the spring too late in our budget cycle. So we're always kind of playing catch up to incorporate what the actual CBA increase was and then to factor that into kind of our next year's base.

So as we've looked more closely into our budgeting process, we now put in an estimate of the CBA increase. To have that, then we would kind of need to reconcile it the following year. But as we've gotten to this place, we found that we're about $4.5 million short in our base due to those adjustments from the CBAs.

We originally asked for $8 million in our budget and that was to get us onto a calendar year cycle. We have converted from a cost based contracting to a budget contracting, which made it far more predictable. But in so doing, where we had been on a calendar year cycle.

The funding we had available switched us to basically a September to August cycle. So that's the cycle we're on now. So the original ask was to try and close that gap and get us all the way through calendar year 27.

But what we need from an appropriation, understanding our fiscal situation, is just to get us through the fiscal year of 27. So again, we've reduced our ask to just Fund us through August of 27, and then we only need $4.5 million for that.

So we're okay revising our request from the government's budget from $8 million to $4.5 million for this program. But I'm going to ask for that money back. Okay, Moving on to Bayrell. We have Behavior Health Crisis center in Evely.

Here's a bunch of data you can see kind of the columns are at the top, the number of patients that are seen there in green and then kind of accepted for care in purple. And it's running about 98 to 99% of the people now that come in that they are able to address.

Of the people that are brought in, about 74% are walk ins, 9% are brought up by crisis mobile outreach, 8% from MH1s, 7% are transferred from hospitals or discharged from hospitals. To date, since it opened In March of 2024, about 2/3 of folks that come in get connected with services.

And with that population, from my perspective, I think that's been extremely successful. Over 2000 folks have been connected with some sort of services through that program. And just Examples include about 430 who are placed in a stabilization bed, 250 in homeless shelters. Folks are also connected with other community services or family Members.

So we have found this program to be very successful from our perspective.

Programs such as that are real important to keep people out of the community. And if we keep them out of the justice system, that kind of benefits all and helps reduce strain on the state hospital when people are potentially arrested for petty misdemeanors, trespassing, and individuals who may have a serious mental illness.

If instead of being arrested, those patients can be diverted to the behavioral health crisis center, then we connect them with services rather than arresting them. And if they go down that judicial system path, they may end up in the state hospital.

So to the extent that we can divert those folks and working with HPD to do that, that is beneficial at the state hospital.

Still coming out of COVID trying to restore a whole bunch of programming, they have opened this new transition program in May 2025 to really prepare folks prior to release so they're more prepared before releasing to the community patients. Increased occupational therapy and recreational therapy.

You can see kind of some of the activities that those include by preparing folks through these activities in this therapy that helps them to be more prepared upon discharge, to be stable once they're starting. Okay, that top right graphic is the average monthly census from January 2023 to December 2025. That horizontal line keeps getting moved.

We are licensed for 292 beds. Our peak census was 391. We are well of the licensers. We've gotten exemptions. So we're allowed to have this volume of patients. But this is a challenge, and this is one of the things that has led to a lot of the overtime, especially in the state hospital, caring for these increased patients.

That little red circle is a dip. So we've been actively working to decompress the patients there. We got as low as 358 and we haven't seen that census in about two and a half years. But then you see that bump up where it continues to increase.

Some of the activities we're doing to decompress the hospital is diversion community facilities. So for example, if there's patients on neighbor islands that could go and stay at a neighbor island hospital that has psychiatric beds, rather than coming over here, we're trying to do that.

We have patients who've been admitted to the state hospital, but as part of the transition, if they're from the neighbor island, they'd be closer to home and family. We have transferred patients to neighbor island hospitals, inpatient hospitals, as part of their process to get them ready for discharge.

We've also discharged 15 patients to intermediate care or skilled nursing facilities. This is something you passed last year to allow that so we appreciate that and that has helped with that. We've also looked at transferring patients to the mainland. There's a program there, CRCC. We've had a contract with them for about 10 years.

And there was a tragic incident that occurred earlier this year. And we've put a pause on transferring patients there. There's currently seven patients there. We sent our own staff out to check in on them and ensure that they are safe.

And we continue to work with that program as we evaluate our next steps and who might be appropriate to bring home. We also will be looking for additional mainland facilities that might be appropriate for other patients as warranted. But we have a pause on transferring any patient to the mainland at this time.

We have decompressed by 47 patients, but you can see that the census has not decreased by 47. We're starting to see, I'll say, a recompression. The bottom right chart shows at a point in time of the patients at the hospital, the offense that they committed.

So as we've gotten more to present, that green line at the top are felony Cs. The percentage of admissions for felony Cs doesn't seem to have increased. What seems to have increased is the length of stay. So we're looking more closely to understand why those length of stays have increased and what we can do about that.

The line below that are felony bees. They have increased as well. Where before they were lower than misdemeanors and now they're higher. That orangish line at the most bottom are actually the petty misdemeanors. Petty misdemeanors have the highest number of admissions, but because their length of stays are short, they don't contribute as much to the overall census.

They consume a lot of resources just to admit them and discharge them. But you can see that their admission rate has been relatively stable. Okay, this is the total average census for the year from Tuscaloor 22 to present. You can see how it's increased since 22. It's been a little more stable from 24 to 25.

Our payroll has gone up as the census has gone up because you have to care for more patients in 25. And our payroll includes vacancy savings. And the payroll actual goes to both filled positions and overtime.

So in 25, our payroll variance is we're short $6.5 million from payroll and we just have to move money around to cover that. We're projecting in 26 a variance of about $10.3 million. But 3.7 of that is due to THP.

So if we receive that THP Monday money, we'll be back to kind of that baseline of 6.5 million shortfall. And we're projecting again similar about 6.3 million payroll shortfall for next year.

So that three and a half million I was kind of offering up earlier as we looked more closely at these numbers, I'm asking to increase our request from two and a half million to 6,000,000 to cover this payroll shortfall.

Last year you gave us five and a half billion dollars for contracted beds that we're using for those nursing facility patients and also for those other psychiatric beds on the neighbor islands, for example. So we're asking to have that five and a half million recur.

So those are the two asks, the five and a half million for contracted psychiatric beds. And there's two and a half, which is in the budget that I'm respectfully asking to be increased to $6 million to cover our payroll shortfall. Okay, I'll try to speed up. Office of Healthcare Assurance.

They do the licensing for facilities within the state, a partnership with, let's say the Medicare program, and they do the licensing of Medicare facilities so those facilities can Bill Medicare and we receive funding from Medicare to do that work. However, we are short about $600,000 of the cost of doing that work from what Medicare actually provides us.

We have to do the surveys because if we don't and those facilities aren't licensed, they can't Bill Medicare and Medicaid. So we have to do that work. So that's $600,000 that we need to find. They've worked very hard in increasing the licensure processing and they decreased from 11 months to 6 months for adult residential care homes.

And the total number of care homes is 500 currently, which is the highest level that there's been in a while. So hopefully that's increasing access to long term care services in the community. In addition to licensing, OKA is responsible for background checks. And the background checks really help protect vulnerable patients in that work.

Okay, so these are kind of the current background check requirements statute. Right now the cost is passed on to the individual and the employer. So it is, you know, referred to as an unfunded mandate. Since doing the background checks, we've continued to expand the program. Last year our Vendor conducted nearly 10,000 background checks of individuals.

Why we do that is because there are people who perhaps shouldn't have direct patient access to vulnerable patients. So in just the last two weeks, where they did 722 checks1010 were found to have disqualifying conditions.

Other states have what's called a wrap back program and this is kind of an automated daily update where it pings databases. This would greatly improve efficiency once you do that initial fingerprint check, which is a national kind of FBI search. All the other databases are state databases.

So if there were a way to automate those with state databases, it's all state dollars exchanging hands. But if there's a way to reduce the cost to our healthcare providers, this would be one way to do that. Our understanding is the ECRIM database is ready for this and can support that.

But to my knowledge, those other databases are not something that can support that. Because background checks are required for certain provider groups. This background check system that we need the funding to implement will make it easier for those long term care other such providers to be able to track who needs background checks in those systems.

Again, they're still having to pay for it, our vendors doing the work. So we need that for that system that is currently in beta testing right now. Okay.

This is a hot off the press development and is not included in our budget. Kinohale is about 60 years old and it has met the end of its kind of use. There are parts of the building we can't even use anymore where this asbestos filled ceiling is disintegrating.

We actually do air quality testing to ensure it remains a safe environment. The sooner we can get out, the better. And we are today. Today, Today I'll say this.

The leases have been agreed to. It's just a matter of getting routing for the signatures. So we'll be moving 66 staff to City financial tower, which includes vital records. We'll have that ground floor space that would be readily accessible to the public to get their birth certificates and art certificates.

We'll also have some space higher up for other staff that don't interact directly with clients. And then at the ASB tower, we'll have 483 staff moving there. Those are about the time frames for moving in. And we're projecting this cost to be $3 million in lease for next fiscal year that we would need. Okay.

All right, special fund request. So the amount column, the total amount at the top is the desired ceiling request. The amount in parentheses is what we think the increase will be. So if you look at the requests, and I apologize, some are for the desired amount, some are for the increase amount.

So I just want to clarify what outcome we're respectfully requesting. I'll go into this a little more detail. Okay. Vaccinations this is from the CDC website. It's through the 2425 school year. So these data occurred prior to the current Administration taking office. And we're already seeing a decline in vaccination rates.

Even though it was slightly up from 2425 compared to the previous year. The trend is down for vaccination rates and exemptions continue to increase. Next year we would expect to see the effect of any impact of the current Administration. With the decline, we are seeing an increase in vaccine preventable diseases.

We've had one case of confirmed case of mumps, two cases of measles and we've just been lucky that we've not seen more spread. We've had wastewater testing as a positive for measles and we have not had confirmation that there are other cases of measles in the community.

It could have been a traveler who just still had some residual shedding of virus. So we're not really sure but we are remain at high risk or well below herd immunity for measles. Pertussis is just one example where we're seeing a significant increase in pertussis cases. So we continue to be very active in this area.

As a result of some of the changes at the federal level did result in the establishment of the West Coast Health Alliance. This was initially created by California, Oregon and Washington. Hawaii joined the day following the announcement. So we're kind of a core Member of the West Coast Health Alliance.

You can see that the purpose is really to provide science based recommendations and guidance that is consistent, let's say across the states have aligned messaging and hope to restore or retain trust in the Committee with these recommendations. We have weekly calls standing and then we meet when we need to respond to something that recent federal action.

We've issued releases on changes in vaccine recommendations, vaccine schedule and it's been a pleasure to work with these other states. One ask is to increase the ceiling so to implement Act 175 that gave us the authority for a immunization purchasing program.

That authority allows us to build health plans and use those funds that would go to the special Fund but would need the authority to expend the funds to purchase the vaccine.

And then we reconcile with the health plans on what the actual spend was for the vaccines because we could purchase vaccines at a cheaper price and health plans to reimburse the health plans actually will save money as a result of this.

The program also hopefully makes it easier for providers that they don't have to manage the logistics of purchasing their own potentially have wasted supply. We would Provide it as needed to the providers so they can retain in their office and administer it to their patients as needed. The Vaccine for Children program.

I saw that we spent about $20 million last year. Ish. And that was the basis to increase our sale, just about $30 million. VFC covers about 50% of the state. For now. The VFC program continues to operate and we can purchase through that program. We do get federal funding to do that.

So some of this ceiling is in case that program goes away. Massachusetts has negotiated contracts with vaccine manufacturers that would get the same pricing as able to purchase through the cdc. But if we no longer can access the VFC program, we still would have to finance that purchase, even though it would be at a highly discounted.

So requesting for that ceiling increase to expend those funds to purchase vaccine. We respond to environmental emergencies. There's oftentimes a cost. We try to recoup those costs, but that's after the fact. So to increase the ceiling in this special Fund will allow us to respond more quickly if needed to have a larger response. Environmental response.

We're simply requesting to Increase the ceiling $250,000. It's currently 1.25. Increase it to $1.5 million just to give us a little more cushion if we need to respond to environmental emergencies. Beverage container there's been some attention about the audit. Some of the work that we can do to improve the integrity of the program.

We're requesting an increase in the ceiling so we could do more program compliance oversight activities, including more audits and other compliance type activities. So the 5 million dollar increase in the ceiling is intended to allow us to implement some of the responses of ours to the honors.

We project that our expenses will get us near that red line is the current ceiling which my rescue. Okay. So for cannabis and hemp, there's only one lab in the state that does testing of cannabis that the sensors use to ensure it's safe, not contaminate it. Health test for let's say THC levels and then for enforcement actions.

If there are products that are elsewhere, such as illicit products might be intoxicating hemp products or other cannabis products that might be framed as hemp for enforcement activities, we need to test those products and see what they actually are.

So this would be a reference lab partnering with uh, College of Pharmacy and Hilo to be able to do this testing as a reference laboratory, which is an important, I think resource to have that in the state to allow us to do this work.

So again, we have a special Fund just Requesting increases healing to be able to start this reference laboratory. All right. Vital records is probably the place where we interact most directly with the public. It used to be where I used to get the most complaints from legislators on behalf of the constituents who have delays getting our certificates.

I'm grateful to the work of our ButlerCourts program because I've gotten much fewer complaints, which is great. You can see the number of orders. Last year, over 105,000 orders are filled. They're very busy. We have, however, an antiquated system. So the success that we've had is a lot of sweat and elbow grease to process these.

Our system tells us the date at which the request was submitted. We actually can't track the date that it was filled. There are five different databases.

And it's just very cumbersome to be able to efficiently monitor these databases and track how we're doing their number one number of requests that if it's not initially clear cleared, it might get lost in the shuffle because we can't necessarily find it.

So we have made significant improvements, but there still are significant limitations and further areas for improvement. We absolutely need to modernize our vital records system. You had increased the funds to get deposited to vital statistics improvement special Fund. So we are requesting to increase that ceiling to be able to use those funds to modernize our system.

We estimated about $5 million to modernize our system. Believe we have about a million of federal funds that we can use toward it. If the funding were available to fully Fund the modernization, we can do it more quickly. It'd probably be less expensive to do it all at once.

Understanding the fiscal situation, we would need to do it in phases. So it'll take a longer time if we are leveraging the special funds. Okay. And then we have our revolving loan program. These are significant programs. So for drinking water, this gets a lot of funding to the counties to support their drinking water programs.

Last year, over $56 million funded projects throughout our state. And water pollution control revolving Fund. I think we also refer to it as a clean water. Again, another $93 million in loans that were done. These are potentially low interest. Some might even be forgiveness. So these are very favorable loans to get funding into the counties.

On Kauai, for example, we use this funds about $2 million for this pilot to Fund 100 individual successful conversions. We continue to look at new technologies and new activities for how we can facilitate successful conversions. Also investing in looking at recycled water use. So there's a lot of opportunity here. And we're seeking to Increase the ceiling. Okay.

CIP requests. Okay. First one. Kalaupapa settlement. So there are underground storage tanks. They're within 100 yards of the coastline. There's also a federal law because of the nature of the tank requires secondary containment and interstitial monitoring rather than funding that only to be closed later because it's close to the shoreline. We just want to close the tanks.

Partnering with the National Park Service for above ground tanks. So this is just to remove the underground storage tanks that we're going to have to do. So this is a priority for us. We're complying with the those requirements. The nine, roughly $9.5 million as far as state lab renovation that is much needed. The Waimano Holly complex.

This has electrical challenges that need to be repaired. Walls are cracking, water infiltration. These are just necessary repairs. And the sooner we it the less costly it will be. Let's see, we have four health centers throughout the state that all need roofing repair.

This million dollars is really just for the assessment of and the design to be able to repair those roofs. Speaking of roofs, Wymana Ridge has a facility that needs a roof replacement. It's beyond repair. And then we have, we appreciate the BNF add of that $2 million for just, you know, addressing deferred maintenance statewide of our facilities.

Okay. Rural Transformation Cooperative Agreement. We appreciate the leadership from the governor's office and they wrote a terrific proposal that received $180 million award really for the size of our state. We really were disproportionately funded in a positive way. So this is a good outcome. There are six General initiatives as part of that proposal.

DoH is the lead for one of them. This rural infrastructure for care access. As we approach this first year, we know we need to get funding out quickly. So we're looking to utilize existing contracts and partnering with other state agencies, particularly University of Hawaii and ANCHOR is modernizing our statewide emergency and trauma coordination system.

This is really to be an upgrade both within any facility that hospitals can be better prepared and then because we have only one level one trauma center. So for inter island transportation, how we improve those handoffs and communication.

So we're wanting to create a medical communications hub that will integrate air ground hospitals and have really a full integrated system with sharing of clinical data, looking at hospital capabilities and capacity.

One of the proposals in this is for rural ambulances putting in starlink capability within those ambulances to improve, you know, care in the field so they can talk to, you know, whatever specialists they need to that might perform care or Prepare or facilitate redirection to the most appropriate facility.

Leveraging that 911 system, wanting to invest in community paramedicine. A lot of calls to the 911 system are not for emergencies. There are a lot of frequent callers.

So if we connect them with other resources that would be more appropriate and that will reduce some of the strain on the 911 system and hopefully connect people with more continuing care. So we're looking to invest in community paramedicine and we're also looking to invest in community health workers.

Again the uh, College of pharmacy has a program where they partner with pharmacists and CHWs and have them support primary care. So we're wanting to partner with them and invest in that program to get more of that product. And behavioral health also another area that's of priority, looking to establish these certified community behavioral health centers.

Expanding access to community mobile behavioral services and other telehealth type services for behavioral health. So these are some of the anchor highlights in our initiative as we get started. Started. I covered a lot of content and I appreciate your indulgence. Just to summarize, these are very uncertain times.

Our mission and vision are steadfast to protect, promote the physical, behavioral, environmental health for the people of Hawaii. We continue to provide science based information and we will continue to work to earn the trust of the public. We appreciate your thoughtful consideration of our request and all the support that this Committee and Legislature has given us. So we are available for your questions.

Great, thank you. Before we turn it over to the Committee, are you folks going to be seeking any emergency appropriations for the session? Not at this meeting. Okay, Members, questions for the Director and his team once the guest start?

Yeah, go ahead. Thanks Dr. Fik for being here. I just wanted to get some clarity on the debt ceiling. Mention that a little bit. And there was one area where it was just like a modest. Felt like $100,000. Where others.

Just curious if you could help and for later to the Committee, can you help just provide clarity on what those little bump ups are in raising the debt ceiling for the various funds that you were looking at. There was four areas.

Okay.

We. It was the emergency response fund which is requesting an increase of just $250,000 for the vital records system. Our current ceiling is about $470,000. We're looking at the revenue that we would receive. So.

Thank you. So last year we got a bump in the amount of the fees that vital records get. So from $1 it went to $7 and so there'll be an increase in the revenue from fees, and we want to use that for the new system.

So that's why there's a bump from 530,000 to $1 million for the ceiling.

Great.

And then I had another question. Well, I'll start with the one that you and I had a side conversation about, which is the Rural Transformative Health Care Grant. And I understand like the six different buckets and you guys are leading one of these initiatives. Just curious.

And I know there's going to be more information coming from initiation to deployment to actually a working system. What is that anticipated timeline or is that a little premature at this time?

So where we can leverage existing contracts. So where we have contracts for EMS services, one of the things we would like to do is modernize the ambulance fleet and adding in, as I mentioned, those Starlink capability. We believe we can do that through our existing contracts so those can occur more quickly.

Our general thinking is we would kind of target one county each year based on the amount of funding we have and the cost for, you know, of ambulances, for example, so we can move more quickly where we can leverage existing contracts and similarly with UH where we can do an MOU that's faster for some of these other things where I have to do new procurements.

It's, it's, it's certainly going to take longer to do that process and then. We can have a conversation offline on step. I just want to make sure we're. Hawaii island would be really great for that. Starling for so many other.

And then regarding the still within the Rural Infrastructure Health Care act, you mentioned establish a medicom hub to unify all of our county dispatch and that's under the EMS center. But earlier in the presentation you mentioned that gap about ambulance and paying our EMS. We pay at EMS rates. Right.

Just asking out doubt, what is that bargaining unit number? Because we had another conversation in budget and finance about some of those bargaining. Units not being included in this.

Do you know, often. So we, we, we, we now have put in our budget a 6.2% increase due to the CBA. And when I looked at the amount last year total, that was about $4 million.

Bargaining unit nine. Nine. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Fing. Thanks guys. And I will say I had a wonderful time with our aeromedicine working group. We put together wonderful, wonderful reports.

So thank you, thank you, thank you. And I neglected to mention we are joined by Chair, thank you for being here today. Members, additional questions or from the Chair, I think.

Okay, thank You. Hi, Director, Department. Thank you for being here. I have a couple of questions. So quick follow up to what Chair Todd had asked about any emergency appropriations. And I know last year you had come in for emergency appropriation for the state hospital. And in last year's budget, we had done 16 million last year.

And then it's 11 million for this year. It says 1.1 million in your presentation. So I just want to clarify. But beyond that, you're saying you don't need any more funding for the state hospitals? Because I don't see it anywhere in your CIP budget.

So I was assuming that it would be similar to last year where it came in as an emergency appropriation.

So I just want to follow up on that. We are not requesting an emergency appropriation with regards to the state hospital cip. We are working closely with Dags and the Attorney General's office. The request is tied to the legal strategy. So at this time we are. Looking to see what.

Fixes to the facility the developer will agree to make and should there be a point that the state decides we need to pursue it on our own.

So I could happy to talk more with you. But you do still need the 11 million that we had allocated last year? Yes. Okay. And then another quick question.

I know you presented it on your presentation when you talked about the state hospital and about there's currently seven patients that I think you said are sent to mainland facilities. I'm wondering if you can provide a little more information.

I had asked when the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation came about the cost differential and whether or not it's similar costs if they're here at the state hospital compared to in a mainland facility. And if those seven are individuals who have longer sentences and that's why they are in the mainland facility.

Or does it vary.

As we place. We looked at decompression in General, it cost about $1,000 a day to be in the state hospital. As we put people in the community, we expect it to not cost more than that. So it really should be budget neutral if we can truly decompress the state hospital.

But if we backfill those beds, then it's a new cost. So the cost of that mainland contract facility is comparable and perhaps slightly less than the average daily cost to be at the state hospital.

Okay. And then the individuals who are going there, it's just they have longer stays.

Or is it varying or so I may ask. So I'll start. So my understanding is these tended to be more violent type patients that might be. We're clinically determined to be more appropriate and a different kind of setting.

But the intent is to send people to South Carolina is that they would are expected to be hospitalized for a long duration.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Just as a quick follow up, you mentioned being licensed at the State Hospital for 291. Does that assume a State Hospital that's like fully operational, where every space is available, or would that number potentially increase? Should we complete our renovations and have a fully functioning building?

So the 291 that the State Hospital is licensed for, is that. That's right. Right. Does that assume that the building is like fully operational and renovated or would that number go up? Check. Shouldn't be completely.

Currently we do see more patients. So we have about. I think it's gone up to even 380 and so we've utilized areas and converted those to facilitate patient beds, you know, housing the patients there. So we're able to do that.

So you're asking if it's at full capacity. I guess that 291 figure, is that taking into account the issues we have with the building or is that not relevant?

I guess the building is currently being fully utilized so that we have in.

Terms of like actual bed space because there are certain parts that are kind of, you know, not being utilized.

Right. So some of these programs are correct. Have been closed off due to some of the leakage. Sure. But there are other areas that they've converted to patient rooms to facilitate the high census.

I see. Yeah, gotcha. But there is a consideration that as repairs need to occur to the State Hospital, we may need to clear some units of patients for repairs. So as we're looking at managing our census and patient movement, that's something we need to be aware of.

So there's another building, Ginsburg, that originally we had thought we would treat it like kinohale where it's exceeded its lifespan, but we still need it. And we still need it because we may have to move patients into it potentially for repairs and stay in a hospital. So there's a lot of moving pieces.

But the need for the state hospital repairs continues to have a significant.

Emergency has been reported in this building. Please cease operations and leave the building utilizing the nearest exit or fire exit stairway. Do not use elevators. Repeat, do not use elevators. Attention, attention. An emergency has been reported in this building. Please safe operations and leave the building utilizing the nearest exit or fire exit stairway. Do not use elevators. Repeat, do not use elevators. Attention, attention.

I'll just recess for a while.

In this building, please.

All right, we're recommitting the many reconvening the Committee on Finance. I'll come up with a better way to word that so I don't get. Tripped up next time. I think we're good with that answer. We're going to move on to the next question. Let's go. Rep. Peruso, Rep. Morikawa and then we'll come around this way. Go ahead.

Thank you so much for your work. I really appreciate the complexity of what you're doing. I am really interested in the space between our streets, prisons and jails and the state hospital. So kind of that middle space where we would see like step down facilities, long term treatment programs and those kinds of things.

And I'm wondering, you know, I had the pleasure of working with Eddie Westero and he was with the Department and I really appreciated his attention to addressing the question of corrupt providers and also really doing good work around cherry picking and hot bedding, the kinds of practices that destabilize patients and kind of deepen crises.

Because, and I am really focused on this question because we are seeing exactly that kind of crisis play out in our community.

So I'm wondering first, do you have ways to identify or like metrics to evaluate providers so as to prevent cherry picking and hotbedding so that to distinguish between providers who are using taxpayer monies prudently and appropriately and those who are just using cycling patients through for reimbursement? So that's the first question.

And then the second question is what kinds of accountability methods do you have? And are you actively kind of looking at providers who are engaging in illegal practices? Tell me if you could talk a little bit about both of those things.

So I think you're asking about contract management for adult mental health services.

Yes, so and really continuum of care.

Okay, so I'll call our AMHD administrator up to talk more about the contract monitoring that the division does.

Hi. Zero.

Hi. I'm Gavin Takinaka. I'm the adult Mental health division administrator. I'm sorry, I didn't catch all of your question.

Sorry, it was, yeah, unnecessarily complicated. But really I'm interested in so the practices of cherry picking patients and then hot bedding patients, just cycling them through for the purposes reimbursement. So that's one category of interest. And then the other category is like actual fraud in that space which was evident and was prosecuted in my community.

So I know that it's an issue and I'm wondering like how is your Department handling those Two types of issues in that middle space that I already think is under resourced.

Understood. So great question. There are. We have a specialized branch within the Adult Mental Health division. The acronym for it is PEER and stands for Performance Information evaluation. And of course blocking on that last one right now with all the acronyms that we do have. They monitor all of our contracts through auditing. Auditing process.

It's a very thorough system. Not just. Not just checking boxes. They go and conduct actual site visits and really look through the records ensuring the contracted vendors are adhering to components of the contract as well as anything related to risk management. We do embrace the.

As Director mentioned our accreditation with the CAR folks where there is that component of compliance and policy risk management. I hope that answers your question.

It answers part of my question. If you could just speak more directly to the practices of cherry picking patients and hot bedding patients and the extent to which you folks are focused in any way on making sure the providers that we have engaged in the system are actually providing that quality of outcome. So do you evaluate outcomes?

Do you look at the extent to which the people who are released from these facilities then just cycle through the same process again?

I see what you're asking. We are going through what's called a rate study. But as part of the rate study, we're fee for service type system right now.

And part of that restudy, we're looking at a value based component option to it where we may start implementing a system looking for compliance with reporting on a gradual basis and incrementally increasing the requirement component of what might be reimbursable through value based system.

That's helpful. I would like to learn more about that work. Maybe offline. Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you.

Morikawa, My question is going to go back to your environmental health. I saw that you safely cleaned up 13 tons of electric vehicle batteries. Who pays for that?

So right now we used. We used some grad money and we used part of our environmental response.

Fund.

And what why we thought it was necessary was because as you know, Matson and other as you may know, Matson and other shipping companies are not taking our used batteries off island because of the potential for explosion. And so we have stockpiles of these lithium ion batteries throughout our state.

And so we have to come up with a solution. And that was that method. We call it the Maui method because it was refined during the Maui wildfires. So that method was used to. Reduce. The amount of batteries and there are.

Substantially more electric vehicles and electric battery use everywhere. So do you guys have a plan?

I understand that there are substantially more batteries on island and it could pose a potential risk. So we are looking at piloting more projects. Like this.

Okay. And then my second question was about that deposit beverage container program. What is the balance in that account now?

I don't have it offhand, but. I'm sorry. I'll ask Linnae, who is our branch chief too, come up and see. She.

Can talk about the Fund. Yeah. Because I see a lot of beverage containers not being recycled.

The current. But the current balance is around 74 million. But we have about 55 million encumbered of that and we anticipate another 2. Million for this fiscal year to be expanded. So it's growing. Yeah. Since COVID we've seen a decrease in redemption rates. And so we are currently working with.

The counties to establish opportunities to increase the number of redemption centers. So like for example, on the Big. Island, we saw reduction of redemption centers because of labor shortage issues. And so we've been discussions with the county of Hawaii to see if they.

Be willing to go out to bid again for those same locations to kind of see if we can get that interest from the industry to start redemptions in that area. So we are anticipating an increase in expenditures for FY27. Not just because of that, but also to address the auditor's concerns. Good to hear. Yeah.

In addition to, we are currently evaluating our segregated rates and handling fees. So results of that rent is a. Fee getting around April, May time frame around this year. So that could also affect our expenditures moving forward.

Okay, thank you.

You have a submitted tag on? No. On that note, does the state currently have any sort of automated deposit cash out machine? I know, I know. In certain cities that's a thing already where you just drop a can in if it cashes you out.

We don't have anything like that. Reverse vending machines. When the program first started. Some of. Our recyclers had invested in reverse vending machines. What they had found at the time was it was the maintenance cost to upkeep them are difficult because parts are coming from. I don't even think it's stateside. I think it's actually abroad.

So they had some difficulty maintaining those machines. And so that's why they've decided to.

Go more manual counting. Okay, thank you.

Rev Kush, you had a question? Yeah, quick one. Switching gears. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it. And all your work in the EMS field, I feel like this is like so much less. Has so much less gravity than those issues and it's the wastewater issues. I know the division.

Jonathan Nagato, I work with him during the interim and his team. Have they been able to increase staffing? I know we used to have someone on island and that's no longer the case.

And so I feel like there was this in some of the cases I was helping constituents worked through and I've heard from my county counterparts the frustration and I tried to be the buffer and the recognition that the short staff and just the overwhelming nature of it is. Has there been any. And not knowing like your whole.

How. Your org chart is within that division, like has there been any steps or improvement or possibly technology. There was gis, lack of gis seeing eye to eye. There was a bunch of things. So can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah. So we do recognize that there are staffing shortages on the neighbor islands. We do have difficulty hiring engineers for some of our neighbor islands. Oahu. We also have some problems with staffing engineers on Oahu, but particularly on the neighbor islands, we're having difficulty.

We are actively working with Members of the Legislature through SPEED and others to speed up our process to look at innovative technologies on cesspools and iwss, encouraging homeowners to. Reduce. To bring into their. To convert cesspools to iwss. We're looking at our rules.

In fact, we just met with some legislators to talk about rulemaking and how we're going to go through rulemaking. Looking at definitions of, you know, there was a time where there was an issue with the definition of bedrooms or lack of definition of a bedroom.

We're looking at all of those things because we recognize that there is a great need to encourage homeowners to convert their cesspools.

Sure. And it was. Yeah. And thank you for that. And I just asked that. It seemed like there was the intent of legislation in the past. It's the hope of the public. And somewhere in the middle it's being interpreted differently. And that was where the snag was.

And so when you do those rule revisions and working with like the speed task force, I ask that you guys consider, you know, is this being wed to process or are we just. Or progress. And you know, that's a difficult somehow in government that gets lost a lot in the middle. Process becomes the most important thing.

And it's very frustrating. Top end, you know, end user.

And I recognize that there may be a disconnect, but that also understanding that we from the Department of Health, we have to protect public health. We want to protect public health in the environment. Right. So how do we do that? By proper rulemaking.

And how we intend to do that is actually we're gonna, we intend to go out to the public. And before we go out, I was just explaining this. We want to go out to the public to share our rules with the public and get there in, before we go officially out to the public for public comment.

Because what I don't want to have happen is that we go out to the public with our public comment and then there, there's some great language or technology or something that we didn't think about and then it comes in through rulemake for comments through our rulemaking, and then we have to go back out for public comment.

So I wanted to be, we want it to be efficient as well.

Super. And last follow up question on that. What do you think a timeline for you guys to achieve those ends?

So we're, we're talking about the rulemaking. I think we had said a year or six months to we want to go out for public comment right away. So we're halfway through our roles now.

So what we'd like to do is go out maybe piecemeal, go out to the public so that they can, as we're, as we're finishing one section, we can go out to the public so that they can get input. We can make changes while we're moving forward.

Super. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. All right, thank you, Rep. Alkos.

Director. My question is, last five years wondering about the kids and their health. Did you guys do some kind of study and compared to cigarettes, what's happening in the vaping area, health wise with the kids?

I got the right person.

Thank you.

Thank you. I really greatly appreciate the question. Representative Alcos, I'm Lola Urban. Our vaping rates have held steady for our high school students. And I'm glad you're concerned because even 15% to 13% of our high school students vaping is too high because that means there are thousands of our high school students who are still vaping.

The other thing we've discovered is for those who are regularly using, they're more addicted. What we are doing is we're reaching out with a program called My Life Might Quit and it is an app now. So there's an app for that. And so it's web based, but there's also an app and it's phone based.

So our youth who want to quit have a means of accessing the services in various ways. It is youth based. So we're working with DOE to Promote it. And the posters go in the bathrooms because we know that's where a lot of the kids hang out.

We have learned from surveys that we were surprised at the high rate of students who said they knew about my life might quit because of posters. So that's why we're again working with the Department of education to have it posted in their bathrooms.

The other thing we're doing is with young adults, we're finding that they have a vape use rate of 22 to 25%. And the 18 to 34 year old group, and that is the age group that started using vapes before we became aware and had an education association program. So we're working on a contract.

We are producing ads to reach our young adult population with high vape use rates.

Are they coming like you seeing them more at the hospital or getting more health problems? They cannot run, they're getting asthma. Like is it, is cigarette better or is vape way worse?

You know, thank you for that question. That's a really excellent question. We are seeing. So cigarettes have other issues in terms of the carbon that the students would inhale, that we would hit inhale with ecigarettes. We're burning more and more, more in terms of there's no quality standards.

So just vaping in itself is not good for the young adults and the children. There are higher risk for asthma. The other thing that happens is besides the liquids that they're baking, which is based on vegetable glycerin, alcohol flavorants and nicotine, there's really high concentrations of nicotine.

And so there's a real increased risk for addiction and dependency on nicotine. So mood disorders disrupts their sleep, disrupts their memory in terms of the brain functioning and being able to absorb what they're learning in classroom. The other thing that's happening is those coils will also degrade.

And so when you vape, you're also inhaling the hard metals as the coils degrade. So there are other risks that are coming up. We also know about more increased cardiovascular risk, high blood pressure, hypertension, that kind of stuff because of vaping. So overall, it's best not to vape.

Thank you. I got one more question, Director. Vaccines. The 72 different type of vaccines that was trying to mandate and now a Bill passed that, you know, we're buying out the vaccine. What is your plans on vaccinating with that 72 different type of vaccine to the public?

So we are concerned about the information that's coming from the Federal Government, especially the advisory Committee on immunization practices. They are not following scientific frameworks for reviewing bodies of evidence. They do not yet have an established evidence recommendation framework that they've agreed upon or published.

So some of the changes that have been made have not have accompanied scientific basis. The recent change in the vaccine schedule, which was based on a review of some developed countries, particularly Denmark, which has been known. It's not really comparing apples to apples.

Denmark has a universal coverage as a national health electronic health record and a very low prevalence of, for example, hepatitis. If you look at other countries that might be more appropriate as peers, we actually have much more similar vaccination schedules.

My position of the West Coast Health alliance is we continue to support the vaccine scheduled by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Again, these are recommendations. We encourage people, if they have questions, to talk to their healthcare providers and make sure if they have questions that they're questions answered.

We do recognize patients consent it is their choice to get vaccinated. We believe the evidence supports that vaccines are safe and effective and we encourage people to get vaccinated. But again, it's most important that they discuss with their provider and make sure that whatever questions they have get answered.

Are we vaccinating guys today like people already getting that vaccination, that 72 different type of vaccination today, like kids and adults.

So there has been some statements made about the number of doses and those it's a little misleading because it also includes every annual flu shot that gets added in there, or we might have a combined measles, mumps, rubella that count as three or as one. So some of those numbers are a little misleading.

When we look at the AAP American Pediatric Vaccine Schedule, again, we do recommend that those vaccines have decades of experience and data and have really been associated with a decline in these vaccine preventable conditions. And as we've seen very recently with the decline in vaccinations, the US Is about to lose its measles elimination status.

So I think the evidence is pretty consistent, pretty compelling with the millions of doses over decades of the benefit of vaccination.

Thank you. Last one is, are you guys planning on supporting, mandating the vaccine if this Bill come around?

Again, to my knowledge, there is no Bill in the administrative package to that effect. We I support vaccines being available to those who choose to get vaccinated. And that is a measure that we are pursuing at this time to ensure that vaccines remain covered consistent with scientific recommendations.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Any questions I do have? Yeah, go ahead. If I may, I just have one question, Director. You mentioned in your presentation. About moving. Vital records office to the city financial. Tower later the year. That involves a lot of walk in business. We know because especially for like marriage.

License, they wander into the capital sometimes by accident. Are you sure that this building will. Have enough parking to accommodate all of the public needs?

So it is on the first floor, it is near public transportation, it's near the parking lot by the post office and it's a longer walk to get to kind of the parking in the capital area.

We did look at it and you know, looking at the volume and how full our parking lot is in front of Kinohale believe there's enough, you know, access nearby.

With regard to obtaining a marriage license. I think most people go to agent so they don't come to the Department of Health. You, you can get a marriage license. From agents throughout the state.

And so I think that's the majority. I think access is really important. So appreciate the question. And I think that's also one of the benefits of modernizing our system is online request. So we really want to leverage technology to reduce the need for in person exchanges. Thank you. Okay.

Rep. Leak, Go ahead. Yeah, thank you for. Thank you Director for being here. Happy New Year to you and your staff. I was just wondering, I know it's. Going to be a tight budget this year. Have we ever looked at or again. Myself as well as some of the.

Body here in finance can be or have only been here for a short time. Where does the Department believe there may. Be legislative policy changes or even, you. Know, changes within departments as opposed to increased funding to really reduce costs or improve outcomes.

When we find ourselves in these situations, you tend to need to want to invest in something that you think will get savings and you wish you had invested earlier. The motivation is unfortunately when you're in those situations, don't have the money to invest.

Just one example that comes to mind is trying to reduce admissions to the state hospital and similar to just hospitals from a medical perspective. If you can approve primary care and hope you can keep people out of the hospital, it's a better use of your funds.

If we can improve our outpatient care and reduce hospital admissions, that will have net savings. You have to invest in that system to begin with.

And that's something that we are trying to work on. I appreciate the effort and I think, you know, working with the task force to look at the hr, processful conversions and whatnot by the US we found. Pockets in areas where in a tight. Year we can sometimes improve those outcomes without additional funds.

And I appreciate, and I welcome the conversations that these.

All right, Members, additional questions for the Department.

Go ahead. One more quick question. So I'm concerned about implementation of Act 219, which is the act measure that we passed last session. And I'm wondering when we passed that measure, I don't think we incorporated any additional funding.

And I'm curious as to whether that is why we aren't really seeing the effects of the or at least we're not seeing that in our community. Even, you know, HPD doesn't know anything about it. And really it's such a severe crisis. Again, what I spoke to earlier, and I think that that particular measure would really help us.

And I'm wondering if you could kind of speak to what's happening with that legislation.

So one part with the MH1s, I think we're reducing some of the strain on the emergency departments by taking those folks to the Behavioral Health Crisis Center. But the Behavioral Health Crisis center is just that. It's a crisis center. It's not an ongoing care type center.

I think there's an opportunity, I think we need to, you know, we are working on and probably need to do a better job on how do we make those, those connections and handoffs. That's gotten better when we talk about the number of folks who are kind of connected to services and care.

So there's an opportunity to do that. When you're looking specifically at an act petition, you know, that is something we really are looking at in that report. Those numbers are low to none. So we recognize there's a need that where we have pieces in a sector of care, how do we have a continuum of care right.

With, you know, established handoffs and connections. So fully recognize the need for us to do a better job regarding that.

And, you know, I can tell you we are working on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Okay, Members, any additional questions?

Go ahead. Yeah, for departmental health. So the, you know, and some of these questions were asked earlier, but I'm just going to follow up a little bit on it.

So the, the, the bottle recycling Fund, do you track if we, the amount of bottles being produced or consumed and if we're going backwards on how many is being redeemed or is it increasing? Because if it's increasing, my assumption is that the special Fund will start shrinking. That's why the question on what is the balance?

I think was kind of important. So we do track the amount of bottles that are being sold. We do track the amount of bottles that are being Redeemed. But. There has been a nationwide redemption rates have been decreasing. We know that like we had mentioned in.

We are in discussions with some counties to try by increasing redemption rates, by adding more redemption. Another redemption center, because where. I think Lenae had mentioned that some. A redemption center had to be closed because of lack of employee personnel. And so.

And we know in one instance on Oahu, a redemption center had to be closed because the lease ran out. So we're trying to figure out ways to increase redemption rates.

Yeah. Because at the inception of it, it was just right to get those bottles out of the land of fuel. That was the purpose of it, I think. And we kind of always knew that at some point it might go the other way. Right. So I've always thought that.

And I know there's people that actually make money off of this. The mechanism, the way it is changing it would be difficult politically. And in reality there are non profits that make money off of collecting it and things like that.

But wouldn't it make more sense at some point in time to have a plan to like, you know, just give it to the counties and increase the fee and. And make no refund and just make it so that they, you know, from like, what is it, one and a half cents now or something to administer?

I don't know what it is, but.

And then 5 cents, right?

Is the deposit. It's 5 cents. Yeah. And then. But just to increase it maybe 2 and a half, 3 cents or whatever it is and just say that's the fee and then just make it convenient to recycle. We're open to discussing all prospects. Right. I mean, the counties already have recycled. What city does?

I mean, other counties don't.

But you know, at some point having that discussion, it doesn't have to be done overnight, but have that discussion to make it just more convenient to recycle.

Absolutely.

We're interested in discussing it with you if you would like to. And then. And then. Okay, so. And then on the CIP request to change the Salapapa underground storage tank. That's a gasoline tank. It is a gas tank. Okay. So in 2000 they didn't have to change it out with that deadline back then.

You know what? I'm going to leave it to the program that owns those USTs.

While she's coming up here. If I get a Correction for the ENT's paramedics, it was primarily BU10, then also some BU9.

Okay.

Hi, R. Machina, Diana Felton. There was a deadline, right, to have it all taken out by 2000. Say again? Take it out by 2000. If they had to be all the independents had to take all the gasoline stations or, or switch them to like double wall construction or something like that, double wall piping.

There was all the requirements to do that and it had to be done by. I'll have to research that for you.

We, we were not required at that time.

Okay.

So government wasn't required. It was just a private.

I don't, I'll have to research it further for you. Just wondering why was it done? Okay, thank you, that's good. And then the. I have a question on the cesspool issue real quick. So at some point, you know, we had this discussion before but in that.

And the mandate has been always a problem for me because it's not financially feasible, right. To convert all of the cesspools. We just not have enough money to help everybody do that or I don't think the private sector has enough money to do that. So it should be more a thought out process.

I still believe that the counties need to come up with a plan as far as what kind of system they're going to be build. It should be take into account Kauai and the Big island are the two extremes as far as percolation rate. Right. What is a very old island, what is very porous.

So the, the amount that is impacting the environment is probably greater on the Big island than it is on Kauai. Just.

Just because that's true.

Right.

I, I don't have anything to dispute that at this part time. So it was never looked into from that point of view as far as the impact from the environment and the type. Right. Yeah. You know, the Big island is very new, it's very porous. Right.

So the, I can see it being a more problematic where Kauai, it's an older island and I would assume the population rate. And that's why we, when they do these cesspools, right. They require you to do that to see how much is being seeping to the ground.

So I don't know. I wasn't here when the cesspool conversion work group was formed. So I'm not sure and I can't off the top of my head tell you what the criteria was used in determining the priorities of the conversion cesspool conversion work group. So there are three priorities. First for the first priority, second and third priority.

I remember at the time when they first did it, you know, was based upon the information they had at that time and not necessarily a well thought out evaluation of the entire state. It was just what they prioritized based upon the information they had at that time when they first came out.

And that's what made the problematic also.

Again, I. I don't have that information.

We can follow up. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Okay, Any final questions? All right, we're gonna adjourn and give people a little bit of time and aim for around 33:05, or not adjourn, recess, and then we'll.

Bring up Department of Accounting and General Services. Recess.

Aloha. We are reconvening the Committee on Finance for budget briefings. We now have the Department of Accounting and General Services. Welcome and please proceed. Thank you. Aloha. Chair Todd. Vice Chair. Taken Members of the Finance Committee, my name is Keith Regan, Comptroller and the Director of the Department of Accounting and General Services.

I want to start by wishing you all a very happy New Year. I look forward to working with you as we go forward in this supplemental budget process and hopefully we'll be able to answer any questions that you might have regarding the requests that have made it through the process itself.

Chair, Again we just thank you for this opportunity because to be before you and the Members to be able to speak to some of the things that we've requested. We're gonna, we did submit our wrist written testimony to you all.

But we'd also like to provide just an overview of the Department, very short overview, as well as some information that provides insight into our operations and highlights that will give you some insight into the challenges that we're facing here at dags.

In addition to all of that, you have the budget request that we'll go over line by line in that process as well. The Dags Ohana of more than 850 hard working team Members would like to express our deep appreciation to the Committee for your consideration of the requests.

Chair, with your permission, I'd like to briefly introduce our leadership team that's here with us today. Thank you. I'd like to start with my Deputy Comptroller Neil Ling Silliman. Yoling Silliman has been with me here at DAGS for the last three years. She's been an incredible asset to the Department. She brings a wealth of experience.

I rely on her every single day to help us get through some of the big challenges that we're dealing with at dags. And so I'm just very honored and I appreciate her dedication as a public servant and her involvement. So thank you Miling for being part of this team.

In addition to Miling, we've got from our Accounting division, representing them is Alan Visitacion, he's the Audit Branch Chief. Thanks, Alan. From our Audit Division we have Audit Administrator Ron Shigy. From our, from the Office of Information Practices, which is by the way an attached agency to dags we have Director Kalata Amarino. Thanks for being here.

From the Archives division we have Dr. Adam Jansen. From our Office of Enterprise Technology Services, Chief Information Officer Christine Sakura. And then from our Risk Management Office we have Risk Management Officer Tracy Kitaoka. From our Land Survey Division, we have Reed Seurat, Administrator. From our Public Works Division, we have Administrator Gordon Wood.

From our Central Services Division, we have Administrator James Jimmy Kurata. From our State Procurement Office, we have Chief Procurement Officer Bonnie Kahakui. From our Automotive Management Division, we have Administrative Services Assistant Seema Suika. Losing. From our neighbor Island District offices, we have our Kauai District Office. District Engineer Eric Agena.

From our Campaign Spending Commission, we have General Counsel Christy Chang. From our Office of Elections, we have Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago. From the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, we have Executive Director Karen Ewald. From the King Kamehameha Celebration Committee, we have Executive Director Amy Hammond. From the 911 board, we have Executive Director Royce Murakami.

And from the Hawaii Broadband Office we have Executive Director Chung Cheng. Thank you very much for joining us. From our Comptroller's Office we have our Planning and Policy Analyst Tony Benavisi. We have our Administrative Services Office, Business Management Officer Myoki Ng, our Management Analyst Andrew Choi and other staff that have joined us here today.

And from our Personnel office we have our Human Resource Officer Dae Ling Duke. And from our Systems and Procedures Office, we have Anna Lewis, Chair and Members. The team that you see before you here today are incredible leaders who I admire personally and I admire them immensely.

They take tremendous pride in their work and have helped to lead DAGS in its mission to provide critical central services support to our sister departments and the public. There's no doubt in my mind that our ability to serve is reliant on the trust and support that we receive from this body and from the Governor.

Governor Green, we wish to express our deepest gratitude for that continued trust in us and the ability to carry out our mission. We're also very grateful to the more than 850 plus DAGs team Members throughout the state of Hawaii that are at the heart and soul of dags. Mahalo to all of you.

DAGS delivers a broad range of services through our primary mission and focus on attaining maximum value for state taxpayers by providing physical, financial and technical infrastructure support for state departments and agencies so they may accomplish their missions. We strive to achieve this through the 8 divisions, 7 offices and 12 attached agencies.

Through these resources, DAGS provides support to virtually every Department of our state on every island. Demand for our services continues to grow and we continue to look within our operations and or ways to meet those demands with our limited resources.

As I'm sure you've heard from other departments, finding the Right people with the right skills willing to accept positions and fill our vacancies is becoming increasingly more challenging. Of our 856 authorized positions, 127 of those are currently vacant.

We make great strides in reducing our vacancies over the past few years, going from a high of 2.24percent vacancy rate in November 2023 to now 15.5% vacancy rate now in November of 2025.

We still have much, much more work to do in this area, but we will continue to increase awareness about employment opportunities within DAGs by taking advantage of workforce development programs such as Hale mua. I'm sure you're all very familiar with the Hale IMUA Internship program program through the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

I'd like to specifically thank Senator Dela Cruz for championing that. But most importantly, all the other legislators who stood behind that program and continue to make it a success today, I would encourage you to please continue to Fund that program.

It is extremely important not only for our Department and other departments, but also for the workforce that's coming up. It's been a godsend for us and our IT and public works operations have taken full advantage of these internships.

What we found though, is that no matter how much effort we put into recruitment, whether it be attending the fairs, the employment fairs, whether it be putting out advertisements in social media or just talking to people in our communities, wages continue to remain a major roadblock for us to attract qualified candidates to accept roles within DAGs.

We do though, appreciate the hard work that Deidard has done to address some of the wage disparities and we support their ongoing efforts to make us competitive with the private sector.

But having more focus on those wages and making sure that we're competitive with the private sector is going to be critical if we're going to be able to get these high level professional positions filled. Another significant challenge on the recruitment front deals with parking.

I'm sure all of you have either heard about it or dealt with it personally within your offices here at the Capitol, but the state's limited parking facilities, especially here in the Core Capital District, has also impacted recruitment. We have 16 parking garages and lots in the Core Capital District.

We continue to analyze utilization and we actually oversell the lots, meaning that if there are 100 stalls available in a lot of we may be issuing stalls for 125 individuals to be able to use that lot or sometimes even more. So we are, we are overselling by 25 to 30% in a lot of these lots.

When I say overselling, I mean assigning to employees. So we're doing our best to try to utilize what we have. But we recognize that this is a big issue for us because when employees take a job that's paying 60 or 65,000 or less in this district, for them to find parking that is reasonable is almost impossible.

It's hard to find anything below 100 or $150 that they can on a monthly basis that they would be needing to pay for parking in a private parking area which is typically 51015 minutes walk from this location. So we need to find some way of addressing that.

We're looking at things like including options for off site parking.

We're looking for off site parking locations that we can engage with those owners to perhaps do a mid to long term lease so that we can get some stalls and then create things like a shuttle service to be able to bring employees from those locations into the core district.

We're looking at also when Hart is going to be having the rail in this district, it's coming right? You can see it right? It's moving along Nimitz and down Boulevard and it will soon be in, along Hale Kauila and very close to the core of the capital district.

Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow have a shuttle service that could shuttle employees coming from, from Ewa and that side of the island to their workplaces here in Central, in the central core district. Those are the kind of things that we're looking at and planning for.

You won't see it in the supplemental, but you will see it in the biennium budget. As we continue to plan for those opportunities that are in front of us in our roles, it's critical that we find ways to address resource limitations.

And our team has diligently been working towards solutions that we believe will have a significant beneficial impact. Take for instance the modernization effort of the Enterprise Financial system or the existing financial management system that's been in place for 55 years.

This body has supported us continuously for the past two cycles to make sure that we had the proper funding to be able to move forward with that particular project. I would like to just share that we are in active procurement right now as we speak.

I can't go into the details on sort of where we are, but I will tell you that we're very excited with what we're seeing and we're very excited about being able to finally make a selection that and then get into contract and move forward with this extremely important project.

We transact about 900,000 transactions per year through this 55 year old system. About $72 billion worth of revenue and expenditures flow through that system. It is shocking to me that it's taken us this long to get here.

But I'm very excited with what I'm seeing and I'm very excited about where we're going to be heading with this project.

It is going to be transformational for the state of Hawaii and for many of the departments that are coming in here and asking you for support and needing help from, from a financial and or efficiency standpoint, resource standpoint, this is going to help transform that. So we're very excited about that project.

I just wanted to say thank you for believing in us. Thank you for providing us the funding for that. We'll have more to report Chair as we get into contract and we would be happy to share that back with you and the Committee. I'd also just like to talk briefly about our Central Services Division.

I introduced Jimmy Kurata. Jimmy is an incredible leader who has been just moving forward with all kinds of transformational projects. We recognize that our facilities continue to struggle with deferred maintenance and maintenance is just something that is.

It's almost impossible for us to keep up with because we simply don't have enough money to go around to be able to support the systems that must be replaced.

But through Jimmy's forward thinking and leadership, we are moving forward with a computerized maintenance management system, otherwise known as a cmms which is going to allow us to be able to compile all of the information on all of our almost 200 DAGs managed facilities that we have in our portfolio and be able to tell us what exactly our maintenance picture looks like so that we can provide you with a very clear picture of what kind of funding we need on a, on an annual basis to be able to get through some of the deferred, all of the deferred maintenance and get to a place where we're doing preventative maintenance so that we're not trying to fix something that is broken immediately.

So that is an active procurement right now. We expect to have a system selected in the next six to eight months and then you will see some pretty amazing results from that system. So we're very excited about that project within our Central Services Division.

While we are on the subject of csd, I also just wanted to mention this has come up in numerous Committee hearings in the past.

But automated external defibrillators, Otherwise known as AEDs, we took the lead and found some additional funding to be able to secure 110 AED units, including cabinets that are being deployed into DAGs managed facilities throughout the state. Not just here in Oahu. Sorry, recess. Not only here on Oahu, but on all of the neighbor islands.

And so we're very excited about that because that means that we are going to have these life saving devices and in facilities that can be utilized by the public in the event of something tragic if it were to happen.

So that is ongoing right now the units have been ordered, they've been delivered, we have them in our hands and our central services team here on Oahu is going to start installing those. And our neighbor island teams are actually already starting that process of installing the cabinets.

We're also very excited that along with the AEDs comes a training component which is extremely important for the building occupants.

We can't train all of the publics on it, all of the public on it, but we certainly will spend the time to make sure that our building occupants understand how to use these devices so that in the event something were to happen, there will be at least be someone there in the building that has that comfort level.

All of that was due in part to Jimmy's take. Jimmy taking the lead, finding the contractor. zero, and by the way, it's Philips. Just so you know, we were able to acquire these services through a company called Philips.

They're pretty well known in the, in the realm of these types of devices and they're providing the units and the training for our people and they're also maintaining these devices on an annual basis.

Because it's one thing to just buy them and install them, but it's another thing to make sure that they work and they're not expired when somebody goes and tries to use it. That would be very bad from a state perspective. So we're very excited about the work that's ongoing there.

I also wanted to mention that I know that hygiene, feminine hygiene products, product dispensers have been a subject of discussion in the past. We are excited to announce that we've also acquired a number of dispensers as well as products that have been delivered to our Oahu office as well as our neighbor island district offices for installation.

So in addition to installing the AED cabinets and the units, we're also going to be installing those feminine hygiene dispensers, product dispensers on our neighbor islands in our women's restroom. So we're very excited about that work and I wanted to share it with you because I know it keeps it comes up from time to time.

So I appreciate all of you that have been involved in those discussions and I hope that we'll see some positive impacts from the installation of those units throughout our DAGs managed facilities. I want to also just touch briefly on our Automotive Management Division.

I spoke a little bit about parking, but I did want to just mention that the team also has been looking at how to modernize their operations and their parking facilities. If you recall, and you've gone to some of our older facilities, you know that they have the coin operated parking meters, right?

Well, somebody has to physically go out there and dump out, you know, you know, process the coins. It's all secured, it's monitored, but they have to go out there and physically do that.

But what we've been doing now is changing out all of those as much as we can, old style parking meters and installing kiosks which allows us to just electronically, you can use a credit card, you just. We've all been there and done that, right?

You select how many hours, use your credit card, prints out a receipt, put it in your windshield and you're good to go for the next 24 hours or whatever you've selected. And so we felt that, you know, other people are doing it, why aren't we doing it?

And so to the credit of our team at Automotive Management Division, they've been very quickly knocking all of those out. So we have a very, we have very few parking lots now that have those coin operated units. In addition to that, they've also been pushing forward on installing EV charging stations throughout our garages here.

Emergency has been reported in this building.

We're going to recess operations.

Sa.

Sorry, I didn't get my headset. Okay, go ahead, reconvene. Sorry about that inconvenience, Jared, but our Automotive Management Division has been making great strides in terms of installing EV charging stations and upgrading infrastructure in our various parking garages and our lots. In fact, to date they've installed 68 charging stations throughout the state of Hawaii and 48 of those were actually installed.

Over the last year. So that's a huge leap in terms of being able to charge vehicles within state facilities. We anticipate that over the next few years there will be 195 more EV charging stations installed throughout the entire state of Hawaii and our DAGS managed parking facility. So we're very excited about that.

We appreciate your continued support in those efforts. In fact, part of the request that we have before you, and we'll talk about it a little bit later, is to increase the ceiling for Automotive Management Division so that we can access some of the monies that we've collected.

These are Non General Fund monies to be able to expand some of that, the need for those EV stations throughout. The state of Hawaii. I'd also like to mention that they've also been making great strides on updating our fleet.

We have about 403 vehicles in our Dags managed fleet and within those, within that Dags managed fleet, about 4% of those vehicles are zero emission vehicles. Another 4% are plug in hybrid vehicles and then about 22% are what we call hybrid vehicles. So they're not plug in, they're just hybrid vehicles.

So you get greater gas mileage and then the balance or about 70% or 283 vehicles are internal combustion engines. And we're trying to move away from the Internal Combustion Engines so that we can be in alignment with what the state's goals are for sustainability. We are doing our best to move in that direction.

The biggest challenge for us though is. Around. Potential bidders coming to the forefront and actually submitting bids. When we put out an RFP looking. For replacement vehicles for zero emission and or plug in hybrid vehicles. It's still difficult for us to get people to bid on our stuff.

But we are trying to to break down whatever barriers might be out there to potential car dealerships from participating here locally. And so we won't give up on that. But I just wanted to let you know that has been part of the challenge for us is being able to find people to bid on Those types.

Of RFPs that we put out today. Just so you're aware, through our efforts we have been able to divert about 2,200 tons of carbon emissions through the ZEV plug in hybrid vehicles and hybrid. Vehicles that we have in our fleet. And more work to come.

And finally, I just wanted to touch on some of the CIP projects that were underway.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on these, but you're very familiar with them, including the new Aloha Stadium entertainment district, the Wahiawa Judiciary and Civic center project, the Kahului Civic center as well as the Oahu Community Correctional center are just a few that are in our portfolio.

We have others too, that we can talk about if you have questions. But the work is being done by a very small group of people within Public Works division. We've got 78 of 99 authorized positions that are working on these projects.

And just to give you some perspective out of all of the work that I've just talked about, they have 474 projects that are in their portfolio right now in different stages, whether it be planning, design or construction, totaling more than $2 billion.

So if you can imagine that, it's like having our own engineering and construction firm working for the state of Hawaii with very limited resources and a huge portfolio of work. So these guys are doing an amazing job thanks to Gordon Wood and his team at Public Works Division.

They have been incredibly responsive, even willing to take on projects that are assigned to us that are not necessarily on our radar. I'll give you two examples. One is King Kamehameha Third elementary School in Lahaina. We've been asked to take the lead and help the Department of Education in concert.

We're partnering with them on this, but to help them with that project. That was not something that was on our radar, but it's something that we're helping out with. And in addition to that is the Hawaii Convention Center's rooftop replacement project.

So two major projects for the State of Hawaii that are not calculated in the $2 billion figure that I threw out there for you to just understand how hard these guys are working on a daily basis. So we're just very proud of the. Work that they're doing.

There's a lot more to share as I've touched barely on the surface of the good work that our people and our Department are doing on a daily basis. But given the limitation of time, I'm sure that you also have many questions about our DAGS operations and as well as our attached agencies that are here.

But I'd like to at this time move into our supplemental budget request if we can really quickly. So Chair, thank you. So in our supplemental budget request, it's fairly lean. We've got 14 requests that are before you today in our supplemental budget request.

Of the $217.2 million in requests, 212 approximately million dollars of that is actually ceiling increases. $211 million of that is attributed to our Risk Management Revolving Fund ceiling increase.

We're asking for your support in that request because we are receiving proceeds from our insurance carriers for the losses that we incurred on the West Maui tragedy that happened back in August 2023.

So we have, I think about $125 million that has been received to date from our carriers and we anticipate that we will receive probably to the tune of about 200. Our policy is 200 million. So we expect that we're going to probably reach that limit on our policy. As we work with the carriers.

We'll have a better idea of how long it's going to take for us to get there. But we definitely believe that we'll have access to those funds. But in order for us to be able to expend the funds, we need the ceiling. And so this is not a General Fund request.

It is merely a request to access the proceeds that have come in through insurance proceeds that we can go ahead and move forward and utilize for things like building the new King Kamehameha Third. Elementary School as an example, or at. Least providing some of those funds to. Be able to support that effort.

So we humbly ask for you to support that in our request and we can answer as many questions you have. We have our risk manager who's here with us as well as our public works manager who has been administrator who's been deeply involved with that project, along. With me as well.

Our second request is a very simple trade off transfer of, of a contracts assistant position that was underutilized and not filled within the public works division. And we're asking that you please allow us to do this trade off transfer that will place that new position in our human resources office.

We are woefully understaffed in our human resources office. Daleen Liu, who's here, who's our administrator, can speak to that. But with our 850plus employees, we have a tremendous amount of work being handled by what, nine people? It's a small eight or nine people. It is a small, small team. It's actually probably less than that.

But we need these positions. We need this particular position because it's going to help us get through some of the recruitment challenges that we have, as well as just the overall need for the Department. So I humbly ask for your support. We're asking for that position to be moved over.

Our third and fourth requests are actually converting a temporary position within ETS position from temporary to permanent within ets. And making this position permanent is going to allow us to support the Access Hawaii Committee and other related duties that the position carries. Our CIO is here.

She can speak to that in more details if you have questions about it. But again, we're just asking for you to convert this from temporary to permanent. Allow us to recruit somebody who's going to be willing to stay with us and not have to not have them worry about it being temporary and possibly.

Be out of a job. Because it's temporary in nature. This work's not going away. This work is fairly permanent in nature. So we feel like it's time now. To please consider making this a permanent position for the Department.

Our fifth and eighth requests relate to the increase in utility costs for Oahu, Hawaii Island, Kauai and maui, requesting for $520,000 for the island of Oahu, 225,000 for Hawaii Island, 80,000 for Kauai, and 240,000 for Maui.

I'll just say that if you were to look at what our utility costs entail, yes, electricity costs are going up, but what's really driving our utility costs are actually water and sewer. So those fees are controlled by the counties, respective counties, that we utilize those services from within, and their fees are going up to their users.

And so, as such, because we have so many facilities throughout the entire state, our utility costs are inevitably going up as well. So we're asking to cover those additional costs. I know we've been before you in the past to ask for utilities. Unfortunately, this is just the nature of.

Of this environment, and we simply just don't have the funds internally to be. Able to cover those costs. So we're asking for your continued support in that effort. That's not to say we're not looking for ways to conserve. We're always looking for ways to conserve.

In fact, Jimmy and his team at Central Services, as well as the Neighbor island offices, have been actively going after a lot of the irrigation systems to try to identify potential leaks, because obviously, if there's a leak, it's leaking water. And the way that sewer charges are calculated, it's based on water usage.

It's not based on how much flow. Goes into the wastewater system. So they're actively looking at that and trying to make sure that we're not the cause. Right. Knowingly the cause of some of those. Increases in water utilization. I will tell you that looking at the numbers right now, we are not.

We are, we're halfway through the fiscal year, and I would say we're about half of what we've spent in the prior fiscal year. But we have not even come into. The hot months yet.

So as we come into the summer months, getting closer to the end of the fiscal year, that's when you're going to see a lot of those costs ramp up, especially water utilization as it relates to lawns that we have in our large facilities. That's just how, unfortunately, how it is.

So we'd ask for your support in that effort. Switching gears to amd, I spoke a little bit about that.

We're asking for the $1.3 million increase in the motor pool revolving Fund, which is going to help us cover the cost of the EV charging stations and the infrastructure that's needed to make sure that we can have those charging stations installed, as well as a $500,000 ceiling increase for the parking control revolving Fund.

And those funds are going to be used for the growing maintenance needs that. We have in our facility.

So in addition to the infrastructure for the EVs, we also have other infrastructure needs like the gates that are going up and down that periodically fail, like the lighting systems and the security systems, all those things that go into a parking garage that we don't really think about. They also need to be cared for.

And so the ceiling increase will allow us to address those ongoing preferred maintenance. That that's occurring within those facilities. Our 11th request is the State Building Code Council may be thinking, why are you guys asking for the state Building Code Council positions and funding for operations?

Well, yes, they are an administratively attached agency and the comptroller sits on the state Building Code Council as a, just so you're aware, a non voting Member. So I have no vote or say essentially in the decision making of the process. But typically we assign our public works division to represent the comptroller because they.

Have a wealth of knowledge on the. State building codes, international building code, the plumbing code, electrical code, all those things that goes into this process. And so they typically sit on that. But by statute, if you look at the statute, the statute requires an Executive Director. It says shall, by the way, an Executive Director and associated staff.

The state has never, has not funded that yet. And so we are asking for your consideration. The Governor sees this as a very important operation and need for the state and so he put that in there. Through our request, our support, we're asking for an Executive Director, we're asking for a support staff, and we're also asking.

For some operational money. So in the event, in the event. They have to fly to the neighbor. Islands to meet with the county councils and, or the Administration, you know, of the various counties, regarding updates to the state building code, they can do so. So this is a really important position.

Positions for, for the Department, even though it's administratively attached, you wouldn't typically see a Department Director coming in and advocating for it. But I really feel like this is something we need to do if we're going to be serious about trying to have uniformity throughout the state of Hawaii. As it relates to our building codes.

So, again, ask you for your support in that effort. Our 12th request is SFCA, the State Foundation on the Culture and Arts. SFCA is here, Karen Ewald, the Executive Director. She can speak to the $2.3 million request. It's a ceiling increase for their commission works of art sealing so that they can go ahead and do the great.

Work that SFCA continues to do throughout the entire state. So she can answer any questions that. You might have about that. And our 13th request relates to the establishment of a Special Projects branch within the Public Works Division. We're asking for three new positions. We're asking for some operating expenses of $728,000 for that new Special Project Branch.

And you may be wondering, what is that all about? Why do you need this special Project branch? Why is it so critical?

And I will say that as we move forward with a lot of the more complex and challenging CIP projects that are coming before DAGs OCCC, the new Aloha Stadium entertainment district, there are others that are in the wings. I'll give you a good example of one that I. I see coming forward.

And that's going to be when we look at what we're going to do with the renovation work here at this Capitol building, as well as what we're going to do with the Kinau Kale. Property right across the street. You just got an update from Director Fink about leaving Kinaw Hale, and there's a reason for that.

You heard the reason. We believe that that property is ripe for redevelopment. But funding something like that of that magnitude is something that we're going to have to look to other probably sources and ways to Fund that and incorporate it with the bigger picture of the. Renovation work that we need to do here in the state capital.

So these projects are becoming more and more complex. It's not your traditional brick and mortar projects, right, that we're all used to. In fact, it's the funding piece. It's that P3 piece, right, the public. Private partnership piece that we need to. Have the skill set in and on our team that doesn't exist right now.

And that's what this Special Project branch aims to do, is to bring on board the right people with the right skill sets that we don't have right now. We're essentially contracting for this work, right? We want them in house. We want them to be our people in house being able to guide us. Through these complex projects.

That doesn't mean we're not going to have to have outside expertise. We're still going to need some expertise. But to have it internally leading us, helping to guide us, making sure we're making the right decisions is going to be critical if we're going to continue down this path of exploring these P3s. And these complex projects.

So our Public Works division, our leader, our administrator is here to talk in more detail about that, if you've got questions. Our 14th and final non CIP request is actually for one of our newest administratively attached agencies within DAGs, and that is the Hawaii Broadband Office.

Hawaii Broadband Office, as I mentioned, is administratively attached to us, but when they came over from DBED in the prior fiscal year in the biennium budget, unfortunately the, the salaries were not set at the level that the positions were being paid at.

And so we're just asking to, you know, set the provide some additional funding so that their salaries are being covered. And I'm going to throw out one more thing. And it's not in this request, but it sort of was in our initial request.

And that was, if you can please find it in your hearts to put them into their own program ID and not in the Comptroller's program ID of 901. It's not to say that we don't love Chung and his team, we do. But we believe that they should stand on their own as their own Prague ID.

There's actually a program ID that's been set up for them. It's 895. And we would just humbly ask for your consideration putting them into the proper Prague ID so that they're not in. In the Comptroller's office. So I ask for your support in that effort.

The final thing that I want to talk about is our cip, and we'll. Go through that relatively quick because there's. Actually not very much that's before you.

We did have our requests that went in, but what came out of it, and we understand there's, you know, obviously there's funding challenges we can live with and we can operate and we can support our operations. We've got three CIPs that you have before you. The total request is 32.5 million.

And a majority of that is going towards our lump sum maintenance, which consists of about 30, $30.5 million. You're all familiar with lump sum. We use it to work through the deferred maintenance list. It's very critical for us to have access to that. We've got a listing of what those projects look like.

What I will say is this. Typically we ask for $20 million. That's pretty typical for us on a, on a normal year. This year it's 10.5, because budget and finance actually converted some cash lump sum CIP of 10 and a half million into. And they pushed it forward into this fiscal year, converted into bond.

So it is not, we're not like getting extra money. It's just that those, that ten and a half million dollars that was scheduled for those projects is, will be programmed. Into this fiscal year 27 budget request. So we would ask for your support. And that effort, it's going to be. Extremely important for us.

And then the additional $2 million that's in the request is for Hawaii Wireless Interoperability Network, otherwise known as High Wind, for those of you that are familiar with it.

It allows us to communicate in crisis when other systems are knocked out because of, you know, hurricanes or other natural disasters that might make it difficult for communications, typical normal communications to occur so that we can make sure that we can access and communicate with our neighbor. Islands and our law enforcement first responders.

Throughout the state of that responsibility. Responsibility lies with our Enterprise Technology Services under our cio. She's been doing a great job moving forward with those projects. Our Public Works division supports that as well. But it's important we need to make these investments because you just never know when something's going to happen.

And we don't want to have a system that fails because we didn't put money into it to make sure that we can upgrade the facilities, the towers, the equipment, those kind of things that. Are important for us.

So, Chair, I know I've talked a lot and I apologize, but it was a lot of important things that we needed to share with you and the Committee today. We look forward to any questions that you might have. I literally have touched the surface of what our team is doing and what we're working on.

So we'd love to take any questions that you have for any of the divisions or attached agencies that are here. And I, I sincerely look forward to. Working with you in this new year. And with, and working with your Committee.

Hello, Chair. Thank you. I have a brief one regarding the Special Project Branch and I guess so at the moment, you know, we have. This big project, right, The NASAD project, stadium project. Would they be, you know, if we establish this, would they be 100 dedicated there until that's completed or like, how.

Does that look right now? That's the goal. And primarily because that's the one project. That's actually moving forward. Right. O Triple C. It is moving forward, but it's not in construction. Sure, sure, sure. So I think I should say this. A majority of their time would be spent on Nascent.

Right now, the people that are spending their time on Nascent is my administrator, myself, some of his staff. And so we're splitting our time amongst, you know, all of the other stuff. So what this will do, Chair, is allow that group to focus in, laser. Focus in on that particular project since.

It'S the biggest one and would be. The biggest one on their plate. Okay, got you.

Embrace questions.

Go ahead. Hi, Comptroller, and thank you all for being here. I have a couple of questions. So the first one is about the state hospital.

We asked, I asked the Department of Health previously a little bit about it because they're not asking for additional funding beyond what we allocated last year, which was the 16 million and the 11 million. So I'm just wondering what updates you might have as far as the work that's being done.

You know, has funds from last year, 16 million started to be expended as far as fixing a lot of the defects, I know you can't tell us that much about what's happening right now. And so I'm just wondering what information you can give and what updates you can give regarding the state hospital.

Thank you very much. Our pleasure, Representative. I appreciate that. I'm going to actually ask my administrator. From Public Works Division to provide you some insight. But I do appreciate you understanding that because it, because there are some other. Actions that are taking place related to the project. We're limited in what we can share and say about it.

So.

But I will allow him to share what he can and I will share. What I can, and that is that. I just got a message saying that if questions come up about the Hawaii Steak Tosto, I should be to the Attorney General and that is a text from the Attorney General.

So my sincere apologies, but can you. Tell me if you've started using the 16 million that we gave as far as work?

We have started getting that into the pipeline to get the work done. It's in the process of being allotted right now so that we can put it into contracts and expenditure.

Okay. And I know we've already had this conversation numerous times as we visited the state hospital, but I am very concerned about the amount of money that the state has now put in. Additionally, beyond the end of what we thought was the completed project. Right. I mean, millions and millions of dollars.

And so, you know, it's really critical. I know what the Attorney General is working on and you're working on. Department of Health is working on it. But this is, I think, something that requires everyone's collaboration and focus because it is just going to continue to suck money from the state when we just don't have the money.

So I know you can't share that much, but I just wanted to make sure that you're aware that I still feel very strongly about the amount of money that we are putting into the state hospital.

I'll just say we appreciate that and we. We feel the same way.

Should know that we feel the same way. Great. Okay, one more question. So you had mentioned comptroller about the convention center. Yes. And I know that's with dbed, but you had mentioned that you are now involved with the roof project.

Can you provide me a little bit more information about what your involvement is as far as, like, when did you get involved? Were you a part of the contracting process?

What is your role? So our team actually has been involved in that process. We provided. Think of us as consultants. We're providing them guidance, providing them input on how we would typically handle our. CIP projects since they're actually the ones. Leading that effort on that particular project. They actually reached out and asked for.

Our assistance and to which I asked Gordon if he could assign someone from his team and or other Members of his team to be able to help. And support the project. And so we've been involved now for probably eight months. Something along that. Eight to 12 months now we've been.

Involved in supporting those efforts. Supporting, meaning you've seen the contracts. You helped approve the contracts. Okay.

So I. I would bring this. We didn't approve the contracts, but we've looked at them.

Yes. So I just wanna. And I'll bring this up again when TVET comes, but you know, their roof project is way over budget. The funding we gave them last year. 36 million was not meant for the roof project. It was meant for all of these other things that they consider critical needs and critical fixes.

They've moved that money to the roof project without the legislature's knowledge or approval. So I'm a little concerned that you as dags were also a part of that and that there was no communication with the Legislature and chair.

If I can. Yeah, just. Just to be clear in terms of the funding and where the funding is coming from for the project, we, we were not part of that decision making process. So I just want to be very clear about from a funding perspective.

I would just encourage you to talk to DBED and or point tourism authority to get their perspective on that because I, I can't, I really can't speak to that. I did not guide or direct or, you know, ask them to move funds from other projects.

If I can just briefly talk a little bit about sort of what was expected and what came out from the. The offers that were presented to us.

And I will say this, that there's a, a lot of things changed from the time that they came in and asked for the funding initially for that rooftop project, including what's been going on with the tariffs, including with what's going on with the actual damage within the rooftop itself and the necessary work that's going to go and the risk involved.

In the rooftop project itself. No one really knows exactly what is underneath that wall. Waterproof membrane until they pull off all the membrane. We think we have. We. I'm saying we. The state convention center thinks that they have a pretty good idea of what it looks like underneath there, but no one will know until they actually get.

In and see that base layer that exists within there. In addition to that, there's a lot of risk involved in meeting the timeline that has been set forth on the project. I think the timeline is like two. Years or something like that, or 18 months. I can't remember exactly. I'm sorry, I don't have the exact number.

But it is a very, very tight timeline for the complexity of the project. If you've been to the convention center, they need to move a crane into there. I don't know exactly how they're going to get that crane in there, but somehow it's situated between the condominium project, the condominiums that are there, and the convention center.

And you know that the alawai is like literally on the back of the. Of the convention center. And so they're going to have to masterfully place a massive crane in there to be able to bring supplies up to the roof deck and to be able to manage that project.

And so there's, there's so many more complexities that I think cause the bids to, to increase over what was initially expected. And so it's just unfortunate, but the work needs to get done. I know that there's talk about, zero, the canopy system is driving up some of the cost.

Having worked, just full disclosure, I work for the Hawaii Tourism Authority for about two and a half years as their chief administrative, Chief administrative officer. Maybe I should have taken the water. That you offered me earlier, chair.

But I will say that even having worked on that project back then, we knew there was risk involved in this project. The canopy.

What I think is interesting about the canopy, which I think adds like 15, $16 million to the overall cost, is that that canopy system now allows the rooftop to be used whenever the center is open.

Meaning it could be boiling hot sun, which nowadays, like if you did it today in the boiling house, you couldn't have people out there. The wind would knock everything over or the sun would like scorch everybody that's on the roof, if you've ever been. Out there on a sunny day.

But now with the canopy system, that 16 million dollar investment is actually going to allow that rooftop to be fully utilized every time that center is open.

In addition to that, what people I don't think are here hearing is that when they do book the rooftop for events like at night and stuff like that, they have to reserve the ballrooms that are across from the rooftop.

So, you know, those big ballrooms, they have to, they have to block them out so they can't be utilized. They can't have any functions in there because if it rains, they got to move everybody into the ballroom. They have to have a contingency.

So they have to basically block off those ballrooms and so they can't sell the ballrooms.

But what this does now is it allows the convention center to fully book the rooftop any time of the day, any time of the night, and not have to worry about reserving and blocking off those two big ballrooms that could be used for generating revenue and bringing in large events.

Well, and thank you for that. I mean, I, you know, I met with the convention center center, I've talked to them about it. My whole thing is if you don't have the money, you just can't do it. The state doesn't have the money.

I mean, right now we're in a critical financial situation here and the Assumption that money would be available for something that wasn't budgeted for is a concern that now makes us think what are we going to do? What are we not going to Fund for someone else? Right. And so I think that is a concern.