House Standing Committee on Public Safety

Convening our hearing on the Committee on Public Safety. Today is Friday, January 30, 2026, 11:00 o'clock am. Even though the clock in the room in here says 10:55am, it is 11:00am on all of our computers and our smartphones, so we are going to get it started.

Welcome to our very first committee hearing for the Committee on Public Safety. Want to welcome my Committee Members. We're going to jump right in. As is the practice of this committee, we typically accept all testimony I do not put time limits on, but I do want to urge folks that, because we're starting at a later time at 11am today, we do have to be on the floor by noon.

And so we are going to be trying to press ahead a little bit but also give people the full opportunity to be heard. We have folks on Zoom. The way this works is that if there's any kind of technical difficulty, we may have to recess. In that case, we will do that and then bring us back on and have our staff people help us bring us back on.

But if you can be patient with that. I want to remind members who are or members of the public who are on Zoom or Members who are at the table, if you have any kind of logo, please make sure that that's not viewable because that will actually kick us off of YouTube if we want to have this hearing posted publicly.

So with that, we're going to get started. If we could have the interpreter move just a little bit this way to be in the frame. We're going to take the bills out of order because we have one bill, House Bill 1531, relating to emergency announcements, which with which we have our ASL interpreter here.

So starting off with relating to emergency announcements. This bill requires the Governor or mayor of a county to provide an ASL interpreter during each official announcement broadcast via television or the Internet during a state of emergency.

It further requires the Governor or mayor of a county to ensure to the fullest extent possible that the American Sign Language Interpreter's face, body, arms, and hands are visible during the broadcast. It also requires a news media outlet to display the American Sign Language interpreter in a picture in picture window during broadcast of official emergency announcements.

Members, we have a number of testifiers here. First up, we have Mr. James Barros, Administrator for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency for comments. Okay. Seeing none. Members, that testimony is available in your packet. We have testimony in person in support from the Disability and Communication Access Board, Kristine Pagano.

Yes, I'm here. Good morning. So much for is this important bill, thank you so much for this opportunity. The deaf and hard of hearing and the deaf, blind community and other people with communication disabilities, this is critical. We need that visual information for communication. And spoken communication is possible. Yes, and that can also be visual as well.

So people who rely on spoken communication also want to see something visual. So whether the mayor or the Governor is making an announcement, TV cameras are trained on that individual. Live captioning sometimes is inaccurate or insufficient. And there's also no picture and picture of an interpreter or an interpreter present there for deaf people who rely on American Sign Language for their communication.

So it's difficult to relay that information and keep and continuously either explaining it or delaying that access to information if it's not readily available during the announcement. So picture in picture right now is you're seeing this more frequently. We actually see this quite frequently across the state and on the continent.

We already have picture in picture or we've got an interpreter there next to the person who is speaking and making the announcement all the way through so that we can see all of the information that's being included in that emergency. And we also ask that in our testimony that we have a specific size for the PIP, and that's listed in our testimony.

Because if the person who is deaf, if they're looking at this information on their cell phone, if it's in one view, the PIP, the interpreter in that will be quite small, but if they go to a landscape view, it's even smaller. So we want to make sure that there are specifications that are followed.

If they're on a tablet or even on a laptop, they'll be able to see this, of course, better, but we want to make sure that it is appropriate size. Also that there are no barriers, that there's no crawl or information coming across the screen that blocks the interpreter.

Sometimes captions are up on top, which is great, sometimes they're on the bottom, which can sometimes block the information. And when interpreters in picture in picture. But thank you so much for paying attention to this testimony. It is critical. Thank you again.

And we will be taking questions so folks can stay. Later, after. Next up for testifying in person, Mr. Chris Leonard, President of Hawaii Association of Broadcasters, in support.

Thank you. Aloha, Chair Belatti, Vice Chair Iwamoto, and Committee Members. As mentioned, my name is Chris Leonard and I serve as the President of the Hawaii Association of Broadcasters. Our organization represents over 100 free radio and television stations across the state.

We fully support the intent of HB 1531 and appreciate the effort to increase accessibility for all members community. But we have some practical application concerns about how the bill is drafted, specifically with language in section B. As written, HB 1531 would require television and Internet broadcasters to display an ASL interpreter in a picture in picture window for the full duration of any live official announcement.

While that in and of itself is not problematic and the goal is very admirable, meeting the requirement would necessitate a two camera setup in all of these facilities and or a producer to do that. Resources that many broadcasters don't have.

Some of the locations where these press conferences have don't have the ability to double the amount of camera crews that are there. And the likely unintended consequence is that fewer media outlets will carry these press conferences as a result, not more, resulting in reduced public access rather than increased accessibility.

Potential solution, which is what's done in a lot of places, is that picture in picture is provided as a pool feedback from the government office and we would strongly support that. And we think that it would relieve the technical burden. What we don't want to have is less coverage for all of our communities.

We strongly support more, but there needs to be a viable solution to do that. Having that responsibility fall on the governor's office or the mayor's office to provide that pool feed would address the issue and ultimately it relieves the burden and makes compliance achievable for everybody. And we strongly support that.

We look forward to working with you guys to find a viable solution. We do believe that accessibility is not just important but really should be required, and we look forward to finding a viable solution moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Leonard. We have comments from Mr. Marcus Kawatachi, Executive Director of the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission. Support from Mr. Louis Erteschik, Hawaii Disability Rights Center. Comments Hawaii News Now, Ms. Katie Pickman. Mr. Jason Hagiwara, Island News, comments. Ms. Kristina Lockwood, KHON2 News, comments. And we have individuals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in support.

Gerald Isobe, Veronica Moore, Nancy Moser, Beth Amaro, and Megan Blazak. Any other testifiers in the room? Any other testifiers on Zoom? May you turn on your... Yes.

This is Kaili. Chair, I'm strong support of this measure. Don't one other testifier mentioned, but ASL interpreter is most important during the emergency broadcast so people can see a language with the with their mouth their sign language so people can. People are deaf, people are vision impaired. They can see, they can see, know what's going on. Yeah.

While the mayor or the Governor Green doing their press conference. So can you please pass this measure? And hope you support this bills so in case emergency happens they can so they know what to do. So thank you for allowing me to testify, and please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you. Thank you. We will be sure to get your name for...

Kaili Swan.

Yes, Kaili. We're going to want to make sure we get your last name too. So thank you for joining us at our first Public Safety Committee hearing. All right. Members, seeing no other testifiers, questions? Representative Iwamoto.

Thank you, Chair. As for the broadcaster, if you don't mind. Thank you. You mentioned the how difficult it would be to have two cameras. I've seen when governors and mayors present the emergency situation with the interpreters standing right next to them.

Would that, you know, and if the media is there to say, if the sign language interpreter is standing too far away to capture them in frame, to say excuse me, Governor, excuse me, Mayor, the law requires the interpreter to be standing right next to you.

That's potentially a viable solution in some scenarios as well. I mean I think ultimately the concern as was expressed by the other testifier was that making sure that it is able to be seen, and we share that concern for sure. That is a viable solution.

I think to a certain extent if the requirement becomes picture in picture, then the reality of it is that it's going to reduce coverage and not increase it. But that is one workaround with it. And I think there are other small issues with the bill as it's written that need to be addressed as well.

And that's the availability of an interpreter. If a press conference is immediate and timely because of an emergency situation, are there provisions that allow emergency managers, and I believe it was raised in the commentary or the comments submitted by HIEMA is timeliness is a factor as well.

That does a press conference get delayed because of the unavailability of an interpreter, and how do we address those situations under unusual circumstances? And obviously many of our emergencies are unusual and hard to dictate exactly how and when they're going to happen. But I do think that that is potentially a solution. But there would have to be some clarification on what the expectation is so that it meets the goals of all the parties.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? Mr. Leonard, stay there. Is there any industry standard language for statutes that have been adopted by other states in this area?

I haven't seen a specific statute in this area, but picture in picture provided in a pool feed is not uncommon. You see it in courthouses a lot because they have space issues as well. So they can't accommodate, especially in large court cases, national cases, they can't accommodate 50 crews. So they provide a pool feed and it's very common. Pool feed could conceivably be managed.

You know, it does become a question of staffing on the government side as well and funding for that as well. But I don't know about specific legislation. Haven't had... This hearing came up very quickly, so I can't speak to that today. But picture in picture provided as a pool feed or pool feeds in general for video from government offices is not an uncommon practice.

I think for me, moving forward, if you are able to find some language that has been used in other states as well as other advocates for this bill might have language that we can collaborate on. I think moving forward we should look at that.

Yeah, I think so. And we're willing to talk with all the stakeholders in it. I think we're all in agreement that it is something that's important and necessary. It's just a question of how we going from an idea that's very valid and very important to making that idea operational from a legislative standpoint.

Okay, I'm going to do something a little bit different, Members, just because we do have a ASL interpreter. My recommendation is at this time it's going to be deferred this to decision making on Wednesday at 11:30am next week so that it gives us time and opportunity to develop some language that we can use to amend this bill moving forward. We have a more than sufficient time. This is only a double. So that's going to be my recommendation. And so we won't have any further decision making on this bill at this time. Thank you. Thank you.

Would we be able to ask questions in the interim?

Yes. Yes.

Alright. Seeing no further questions. Moving on. Members, we are going to move back up to the normal agenda, House Bill 1751. We want to thank our interpreter. Thank you.

I'll be staying for 911 also, so I'm just going to stay here.

We're moving to House Bill 1751, relating to the Hawaii National Guard State Tuition Assistance Program. This authorizes the adjutant general to expand Hawaii National Guard State Tuition Assistance Program to include graduate degrees at the University of Hawaii for qualified enlisted personnel in the Hawaii National Guard. Here in support is Major General Stephen Logan or his representative from the Department of Defense.

Chair Belatti, Vice Chair Iwamoto, Committee Members. Aloha and good morning. Mahalo for the opportunity to provide testimony this morning for this very important recruiting and retention bill. My name is Colonel Damon Hogsten. I currently serve as the Chief of Staff for the Hawaii Army National Guard.

Hawaii Army National Guard stands on its favorable written testimony on this bill, House Bill 1751. From an application perspective, I can contest firsthand just how important this is for our Hawaii Air and Army National Guard members as they advance their education goals as well as we continue to professionalize our force. I'm here this morning to answer any specific questions you may have regarding this program in this specific bill.

Thank you. We have no questions at the moment. We'll go through all of the testimony. We had also testimony in support from Brigadier General Walter Ross, Hawaii National Guard.

Aloha, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee. I'm Brigadier General Ross, and I rest on my testimony as submitted. Here for any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Testimony in support from Debora Halbert, Farrah-Marie Gomes, and in person. Thank you for being here.

Good morning, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee. I'm Debora Halbert, Vice President for Academic Strategy for the University of Hawaii System. On Zoom is Associate Vice President for Student Affairs, Farrah Gomes. We stand in support as in our written testimony for this bill.

And I will just add that earlier this year, well, I guess technically last year. This academic year, members of the National Guard reached out to us to see see how they could better facilitate the ability for their members to attend the University of Hawaii. And so they have some really go getters on their team and we're very excited to work with them. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Testimony in support from individual Mr. Mike Golojuch Sr. and Ms. Megan Blazak in support. Any other testifiers in the room? Any other testifiers on Zoom? Seeing none. Members, questions?

I have a question. I guess the question would be where is the money coming from?

It's the money comes from our appropriation, our state appropriation within our department. Currently the funding level is at 250,000.

That's sufficient?

Currently, yes, sir.

Thank you.

I want to note, Colonel Hogsten here... No, you don't have to stand up. Had provided testimony in support, and also Major General Stephen Logan from the Department of Defense had also provided testimony in support. So I just want to note that. Members, any other questions? Seeing none. Moving on. Thank you. Moving on to House Bill 1752.

This measure removes the adjutant general as a non-voting ex officio member of the HIEMA Advisory Committee, as the administrator of HIEMA, as a non-voting ex officio member of the EMSAC. We have testimony in support from Major General Stephen Logan's representative.

Aloha and good morning, Chair Belatti, Vice Chair Iwamoto, and Members of the Committee. Obviously, I'm not General Logan. Neal Mitsuyoshi, Brigadier General, retired, representing Major General Logan and the Department of Defense. We stand on our written testimony in support and are prepared to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Thank you. Testimony in support from the Department of Health.

Aloha. Aloha, Chair, Vice Chair, and Committee Members. Garrett Hall, Chief of Emergency Medical Services for the Department of Health. We stand on our written testimony and would like to call out that part of the Governor's package does have an EMS modernization section in that, and we would ask for support in amending those two pieces to also coincide with this so everything is consistent. Mahalo.

Any other late testifiers in the room? Any testifiers on Zoom?

Testimony in support. This is Kaili Swan.

Thank you, Mr. Swan. Any other testifiers? Members, any questions? Seeing none. All right, we're just moving right along. Yes. House Bill 1577, relating to 911 services. This requires the 911 Board to establish, implement, and maintain a statewide emergency safety profile system that allows residents to voluntarily create and manage secure personal profiles containing information relevant to emergency responses. We have first up, testimony in support, Department of Health.

Aloha again, Chair, Vice Chair, Committee Members. Garrett Hall, State Chief of Emergency Medical Services for the Department of of Health. We are in support of this initiative. It's proven across the country and other jurisdictions as successful for also reducing the volume of transports and other key items in emergency medical response.

It's key. Of note though we do want to call out that there has not been appropriated any funding for integrating this type of application across the emergency medical services center system. So we did call that out in our testimony.

We also want to just clarify who would be responsible for the integration on the emergency medical services side, as we believe it's appropriate for the Department of Health and the Emergency Medical Services section to own that responsibility in partnership with the 911 Board.

And then lastly, we strongly support this and the public education component, but we do want to advocate for amendments to this to also incorporate advanced directives. That's a key component. And finally, something to limit liability.

If this information is not integrated into the state's electronic medical record, which we provide across the state, how do we limit the liability of the provider who's responding so that, if they do take life saving actions, but there was an advance directive and it was put into the system, it didn't transmit to that provider, they are not liable at that time. So there's a few things there that we would like to have considered. Mahalo.

We have testimony in support from Executive Director Daintry Bartoldus, Hawaii State Council on Developmental Disabilities.

Thank you, Chair, Vice Chair, Committee Members. Daintry Bartoldus, Executive Director for the Hawaii State Council. We feel Smart 911, we're in strong support. Smart 911 is a cost effective public safety tool that strengthens emergency response for residents with access and functional needs.

Including kupuna, pregnant individuals, families with infants, with young children, people with medical conditions, multi generation households, and individuals with disabilities by allowing residents to voluntarily share vital critical information in advance to address their mobile needs as well as access and functional needs.

So again, we're in strong support of this. I know as this bill goes forward, as you heard, there's going to be some further discussions that need to take place. So we hope this could pass so those discussions can take place. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Thank you.

Thanks, Ms. Bartoldus. We have Royce Murakami, Executive Director, State of Hawaii 911 Board.

Good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee. My name is Royce Murakami, Executive Director, and I stand on my written testimony. Thank you.

Testimony in support, Kristine Pagano, Acting Executive Director of the Disability and Communication Access Board.

Good morning. Yes, we stand by our testimony that we provided, and the Disability Communication Access Board really stands behind this. We do have some concerns about confidentiality. Make sure that there is a provision that keeps anyone from stealing someone's identity or information. We want to know who has access to this information.

We just want to make sure that that's protected if we're going to go ahead and do this. You know, we want to make sure it's only honest people who are looking at this information and that no one can take advantage of it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. We have testimony in support, Ms. Caroline Cadirao, Executive Office on Aging. Mr. Louis Erteschik, Hawaii Disability Rights Center, in support. Ms. Elma Pacleb, Pilina Health Resources Inc, in support. In support, Hawaii Self Advocacy Advisory Council. In support, Mr. Kaili Swan on Zoom.

Good morning, Chair, Vice Chair, Community Members. I am strong supporter of this bill because Smart 911 is most important to people with disabilities because some people don't understand how to use Smart 911. And if people call 911 or 911 call center has so many questions, people just don't understand. So I use Smart 911 app.

It's very useful and I'll show you how to use it. If you need me to ask if you need me to show you how to use it. And Smart 911 is protected. There's no, it's protected and is secret is extremely protected.

So if someone call 911 so the 911 caller can see I know other city, other, other county don't have it. So only Oahu, they have it. So this is a pretty good tool. So I love it. So please let me know any question you may have. Thanks for allowing me to testify.

Thank you, Mr. Swan. We have a number of individuals in support. Mr. James Kilgore, Ms. Leilani Kailiawa, Ms. Deziree Tacub, Ms. Kylie Moniz, Ms. Barbara Poole-Street, and Ms. Annette Tashiro. Any other testifiers in the room? Any other testifiers on Zoom? Seeing none. Members, questions? Representative Morikawa.

Just a clarification. That testimony was very important. This is already happening on Oahu?

Correct.

So the intent of this bill I believe is to make it so that the whole state can participate? Okay. I just want to clarify. Thank you.

Thank you, Representative Morikawa. Any other questions? Go ahead, Representative Iwamoto.

I think for the Department of Health. So my initial thought is emergency services are often funded by counties, such as the County of Honolulu is already has this, has a set up. So would we be and you requested state fund. There would be state funding that would be required. So the state funding would just go then to those counties who have not implemented it.

So it's complex. So the state actually is under statutory requirement for all EMS and emergency medical services. The County of Honolulu has exercised their right to take emergency medical services in house. The rest of the counties are coordinated through the Department of Health. But another complexity is the county did not take on full responsibility regarding dispatch.

We still pass through funds to the counties for 911 dispatch, funding for EMS specifically. And also are required for supervising curriculum for dispatchers. There's a lot of levels of complexity. Simply put, City and County Oahu has taken on the component of responding to ground 911. They haven't even taken on air.

So they just do the ground 911 response and the dispatch function of that. But there's a lot of components that still rely with the department lie in the Department of Health.

So also your testimony earlier made me think about something that also should be a consideration is that if somebody, there's an emergency for somebody on Molokai, for instance, and they get airlifted for medical services in Honolulu, it would be helpful if all of this important background information about the individual is readily accessible. Right. Because if they're all siloed systems based on county, they might not, the services are getting on Oahu might not be tapped in.

So I'm going to put in a shameless plug here. But as part of the Rural Health Transformation Program, the governors and in the package that we introduced that is tentatively funded, we'll find out for sure from CMS, is the centralized MEDCOM center, which provides funding for secondary PSAPs, which Honolulu currently has for all of the counties and then a tertiary overlap for the entire state, which would accomplish that.

So there are federal funds coming and we have a plan in place to do that. What we would need from all of you is there's the two other measures here that there's the Senate Bill, it's on my other one, but I can refer to those. The modernization and the governor's package that establishes the MEDCOM center formally. We need that support that will help ensure that we continue to get the federal funding over the five year period to implement it.

Members, any other questions? Representative Poepoe.

I think for Royce. Thank you. I was just wondering if you'd maybe be able to speak a little bit to like an example of the actual impact of a program like this. Because in my district, very rural, not everybody has street addresses posted, so it can be difficult to locate residences sometimes.

And I think perhaps under the household information, I don't know if that's information that can be input. But if that were an information that was in the system, it would be a lot easier sometimes to quickly locate a property. So I was just wondering if you could speak to like the impact of the program and how having this information really helps.

Yeah. For Smart 911 it is very important because you have that additional information that the dispatcher can see immediately. It is attached to the number. So that information and location is always attached to that specific number. So addressing on our end should not be an issue I believe.

As I stated in my testimony too, we haven't had the opportunity to meet as a board, so we hope that you guys can defer this until a later date. We have our meeting scheduled for next week, Wednesday, February 4th, so I definitely can give you guys more information and our position on the bill. Thank you.

Representative Shimizu.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. As it was clarified, this is happening currently on Oahu. So the Department of Health's concern that it be fully integrated with the Department of Health Emergency Medical Services dispatch system, MEDCOM, and the EMS electronic CR systems. Is that happening right now?

I would need to double check and I would also need to talk to...

It is not happening right now.

Okay. And as it's happening now on Oahu, are there any confidentiality concerns or systems in place that ensure there's no breach of that?

That I am not aware of. I know this program started quite some time ago, and I believe in 2015. I believe there's other programs out there that are similar, possibly more updated, so we can begin to look into that as well too.

So you would be able, you would be the person or the entity that would be able to answer that?

Yes, I can look into it. The 911 Board does fund all the different counties for any 911 related equipment, software program, anything related to the processing of a 911 call.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, Any other questions? All right, seeing none, Members, we have gone through our entire agenda. Let's go into decision making if that is okay with everyone. All right, moving to the top of the agenda. House Bill 1751 relating to Hawaii National Guard State Tuition Assistance Assistance Program.

Chair's recommendation is to pass this out with an HD1, changing the effective date to January 1, 3000. Just as an explanation to the public, this is just a way for us to keep moving the bill forward and making sure it's not going to be effective on January 1, 3000.

At the end of the day, we do want to move this bill forward and this is a way to keep it going and making sure that. Note that there has been a change to it and it does need to have some consideration for financial purposes. So with that recommendation is to pass at HG1.

Any comments, questions or concerns? Seeing none. Vice Chair for the vote.

Okay, this is regarding bill HB 1751. The chair's recommendation is to pass with amendments. [Roll Call] Madam Chair, your recommendation passes with 9 Ayes.

Thank you. Members, moving on to the next bill. House Bill 1752 relating to emergency medical services. Members, this bill is really kind of just a bill. So my recommendation is going to be pass it as is with the upon approval, effective date. Any comments, questions or concerns?

My reservation is testimony from the Department of Health regarding incorporating measures to ensure consistency and comprehensive modernization with the HRS. Thank you. That that would be considered.

Yeah, thank you. Representative Shimizu. I believe that's going to be a governor's bill and we kind of got ahead. So we will be looking out for that bill and then we're not going to not take that bill up. We just want to move this bill out. Okay. Seeing any other comments, questions or concerns? Seeing none.

Vice Chair for the vote.

Okay, so this is regarding HB 1752. The Chair's request recommendation is to pass unamended. [Roll Call] Chair your recommendation passes with 8Ayes and one with reservation.

Thank you. Vice Chair. Moving on to House Bill 1531 relating to emergency announcements. As I previously announced, we're going to defer this for decision making to Wednesday, February 411:30am to provide us opportunity to come up with some amended language pursuant to the testimony that was provided. Chair's Recommendation on Hospital 1577 relating to 911 services.

Chair's recommendation is going to be to defer this to decision making to Friday, February 611:30am this will allow us time to look more carefully at a variety of amendments that have been recommended through the testimony and as well as to follow up with the 911 board which will be meeting on February 4th. Member is Comments question.

So question from the gallery is what date is that? Is it 5th or the 6th?

I'm sorry. Friday, February 6th at 11:30am Friday, February 6th, 11:30am seeing no other business for this Committee, V.R. adjourned. Thank you. Thank you Members.