Senate Standing Committee on Government Operations

Okay, welcome back, everybody. Good afternoon. Reconvening today, Thursday, February 192026 at 3:00pm for decision making on one measure, one measure only, which was heard on February 17th. We're in conference room 225-recommendation measure Members. There's a lot of. On 3294, there was a lot of conversation. This is a controversial measure.

The House does have a companion moving that addresses the legal arguments that were going on. However, we'd like to keep this one moving simply to address the human side, as we saw with all of the people who are coming in with the stories that when they're being released, when they're released, they're left with nothing.

So in order to provide something on that front while the bills move on for further discussion, recommendation is we're going to delete language relating to the advance compensation. We're going to take the recommendations and testimony that will require.

Once made aware of an individual in the process of pursuing a reversal of a prior court decision where innocence is in question, the dcr in conjunction with dhs will assist the petitioner in preparing applications for individual financial and medical assistance so that the processing may be expedited upon release.

Require DCR to alert DHS immediately upon release of the petitioner so that DHS case manager can be assigned to the individual for assistance with cell phone for one year, housing, employment, mental health counseling and expedited processing of benefit assistance for themselves.

Any compensation that petitioner is qualified for will continue until the claimant is gainfully employed and would no longer qualify for such benefits as with any other resident of the state. And then require DCR to also provide a state ID to the petitioner upon release.

We'll also have technical, non substantive amendments for clarity and consistency and because of the changes made in this measure and to encourage further conversation, we'll add a Defective date of 2525 Members. Questions? Comments? If not Vice Chair 3294 Senate Draft 1. I vote yes.

Recommendations to pass SP 3294 with amendments. Chair votes I. Vice Chair votes I. Senator Hashimoto, Aye. Senator Moriwaki, Aye. Senator AWA excused. The measures adopted. Okay, thank you very much. This concludes the GBO decision. Defer the Senate.

Good afternoon. We're convening the Joint Committees on Water, Land, Culture and the Arts, Public Safety and Military Affairs, and Government Operations on our joint 3:05 p.m. agenda here in State Capitol Conference Room 225. Up first is-- or the only bill on the agenda is SB 2237, relating to fire prevention, which requires each state agency to regulate--excuse me--to create and regularly update hazard maps, and requires DLNR to adopt rules, and specifies that DLNR shall clear brush within a time certain. Testifying first is DLNR.

Aloha, chairs, vice chairs, members of the committees. My name is Michael Walker. I serve as the Statewide Fire Protection Forester for the Department of Lands and Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife. The department has submitted testimony with comments on the measure.

In summary, the department recommends that there should be a single lead agency that develops this map with input from all other agencies and subject matter experts. Extending the timeline out to five years would be more reasonable; put less demands on the department, and for technical issues, et cetera.

And in regards to the Community Fuels Program, having the Department of Land and Natural Resources manage all of the fuels on state lands would put an unfunded mandate upon the department to greatly expand its operations. We're open to discussions about that, and I'm available for any questions you may have. Mahalo.

Thank you. That's everyone who had signed up to testify on this measure. Is there anyone else wishing to testify? All right, seeing none. Are there questions? Chair Fukunaga.

For Mr. Walker. You know, your comments are about having some sort of centralized methodology and having a group work together on this. I guess we recently adopted Senate Bill 17, kind of as a wildfire mitigation working group, and there were a number of responsibilities which are going to be centralized under the Fire Marshal.

Is that kind of what you had in mind, something like this that could be added to that and then you determine what's the appropriate timing for some of these kinds of planning activities?

Yes, ma'am. I agree with that. The Fire Marshal's Office should be the lead with the, kind of a working group providing input. Historically, Forestry and Wildlife has worked with Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization to produce a lot of the risk maps historically in the state, and with the Fire Marshal's Office just newly opening up and developing, we'll help support that in any way we can.

Okay. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Hey, guys, that was my question.

Okay. Wonderful.

Any further questions? Seeing none. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Okay, so that being the only bill on the agenda for the joint agenda, 3:05 agenda, chairs having conferred-- or do you want to--

Yeah, yeah. I think we confer-- we got an omnibus you guys have just been working on. We should put all our eggs in that basket so everybody coordinates together. So I say we just kick this one to the curb and work on that one.

Is that the 17-- SB 17?

Yeah.

And it has the Fire Marshal in the lead?

Yeah, exactly. Does that sound good? We'll just let this one go and make that the one the vehicle of choice?

Okay. Sounds good. Chair Fukunaga will champion the way.

Yes.

And embrace all of them.

Light the whale.

Okay. So with that, then, recommendation's to defer and let the PSM Committee work on that comprehensive measure that's already got all that other stuff in it. And we are adjourned.

All right, good afternoon. We're convening our joint 3:10 p.m. committee hearing with the Water, Land, Culture and the Arts Committee and our good friends on the Government Operations Committee. We have several bills up, so we'll make sure-- we'll ask everybody to make sure they have their written testimony submitted and be limiting folks' testimony to make sure there's time to get to everybody.

So UP first is SB 2596 relating to government leases, which requires property leases between state government entities to cost no more than $1 per year. And testifying first is DLNR. Thank you. And that's actually all the folks who had signed testify. Is there anyone else wishing to testify? Seeing none. Are there any questions? Seeing none.

All right, thank you. Let's move on to SB3002 relating to the Hawaii State Planning act, which establishes green infrastructure, green infrastructure objectives, policies and guidelines, and makes other conforming amendments. Testifying first on this one is dlnr. Thank you. Up next is opsd. Thanks. That's everyone who had signed up to testify.

Is there anyone else wishing to testify on this measure? Seeing none. Other questions? Just one for opsd, if you would. Why don't you come. Come forward. Thanks. You just noted.

Well, taking a quick look, it looks like every Bill that touches the planning act this year, you guys are testifying the same thing, which is there's an ongoing kind of update that is in process. Is that right?

Yes, the update will. It's a 252025-2027 update and it will conclude with a report to the Legislature in 2027.

Yeah. And for that, just looking at the conversation on this in the house side on some of these other bills that are also to same thing. Is that update touching all of the different issue areas inclusive of the ones that are contemplated by this measure?

Yeah. Yeah. So just to. Just to add to that, you know, not only did this particular issue on green infrastructure come up in the phase one report that was done by OPSD in 2018, we are sharing the legislation that's coming up this session with the task force that we about spoke formed by the Legislature under Act 36.

And so, you know, we feel confident that this issue will be addressed. And we plan to work with the task force to form pigs to investigate these issues further.

Appreciate that the last question is those recommendations we will have to adopt as the Legislature. Is that or modify as we see fit.

Yes. We will submit a final report to the Legislature prior to the 2027 session, and that will include draft legislation for the legislature's consideration.

Thanks. And so until then, between now and then, let's assume that something moves forward. We're going to have theoretically implementation this summer. If we get the draft report next year, we'll then need to adopt it, which would take then the following session, presumably, or two, depending.

I can't imagine we would adopt one omnibus, massive comprehensive Bill to rewrite most of statute. We would also touch on this space.

So for not just this measure, but some of the others that are currently being contemplated by the various committees that touch on the state Planning act, would it not make sense to still move forward with those because we can put that in place now, affect projects that are timely and wouldn't be affected because of the timeline where we'd have to come back and theoretically reconsider other things?

I think that would be the legislature's call. We're just trying to raise the fact that there is an ongoing comprehensive review going on right now. And so consideration of some of these different issue areas might be better off to be thought about comprehensively. Otherwise, you know, there will be.

If there are changes that are adopted this session, you know, we'll. We'll still probably take that into consideration for the 2027 report.

Yeah. And just as the other. Some of the other committees, both in the Senate and House, have moved those measures anyway, because they're a priority for whichever committees those are, we can always come back and amend that amended section of statute, which we'll have to do anyway.

So even if there's some improvement thereupon after the fact, that still comes back to us.

That's true. I will say that the act did call for sort of reassessing the overall framework of Chapter 226 as well, and not just the individual side actions. So it's very possible that it looks very different. It's very possible that, you know, it's just updating language. So at least in terms of what the recommendations would be.

Sure. Okay. Thank you very much. Yes.

This is interesting. Where are you going to put this green infrastructure into which functional plan? Okay. Now, just to let you know, I was on the Policy act with, under Ariyoshi that created the state plan, so I'm very familiar there were 12 functional plans. It's historical. Sorry, guys. So there are 12 functional plans. And I could.

So my question is there is no such thing as green infrastructure objective plan. So where are you going to put this particular Bill into?

Yes, and that is one of many issue areas that have come up that, you know, don't necessarily fit into the, the current structure of Chapter 226.

And just to give, I'll make it short, there's 12 functional plans and education, water, agriculture. I mean, everything under the sun according to our state government. And that's the question I'm asking. So it's just to see how, where is this going to go in. Yes.

And your question exactly, Senator, is why we need to reassess the overall framework of Chapter 226 to make sure that it reflects. Reflects current priorities and issues, but also is flexible to be adaptive to change moving forward, which I think, and I

understand that because there's other bills, too, that also tells us to include it in a state plan. And then I'm looking at it, say, okay, where are we going to put this one? Okay. So anyway, question. Are you staff Member or you're the contractor?

Your staff with special plans, French and opsd.

Okay, good job. Continue to work on it. Thank you. Bye. Turn it to court.

Thank you. Who currently maintains this project or who will maintain it? Maybe I should say so.

Are you referring to Chapter 226? Yes. So it does. It does specify duties for the Office of Planning and Sustainable Development. So we are the staff that are supporting the act that calls on OPSD to organize a task force, convene a task force to conduct a comprehensive review and recommend updates to.

Yeah, because this doesn't call for any appropriations. So I was just wondering, the maintenance moving forward, if that would fall onto your folks.

Listen, that's certainly something, I think, on the implementation side of Chapter 226 and just the office being able to be an ally with agencies and actually implementing that's something that, you know, we imagine will come up over the summer as we talk about how best to implement Chapter 226.

So, you know, hopefully there's something that addresses that in the package that we submit to the Legislature in the 27 report.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Any further questions? Seeing none. All right, thank you very much. Let's move on to the last measure on our agenda, SB3067 relating to records, which removes outdated requirements and formats for plans filed with the registrar's office, updates permissible drawing scales and makes other Related amendments. Testifying first on SB3067 is Dags. Chair. Chairs, we stand. Testimony support.

Thank you. That's everyone who had signed up on this measure. Is there anyone wishing to testify? Seeing none. Are there any questions? No.

Housekeeping?

Seeing none. All right, that's the last measure on our agenda. Sure. You just go right into it. All right. We'll go straight into decision making on these three measures. So up first is Senate Bill 2596 relating to government leases. Recommendation is to move this along as is, to the Ways and Means Committee.

I'll just note for all these bills, we are just a few hours away from our deadline to file Committee reports and measures as they move forward. So we're not going to have time to make the tweaks that we normally would.

But we'll note those for the next Committee and work with the various stakeholders along the way to sort those out so that we can have the good drafts ready to go as we proceed.

But for today, we just need to get these filed and we can't have our attorneys who are already overwhelmed with bills, to miss that deadline. So any questions with that?

I just even. We add the time. I think you should move the first one as is, because why we. It's to stop Peter from robbing. All right. I mean, that's my comments for the

Committee on Water, Land, Culture and the Arts. Chair's recommendation is to pass. Unamended. Chair Lee.

Vice Chair goes aye. Senator Chang. Senator Lamau. Senator De. Court measures adopted. Mr. Chair.

Aye.

Thank you. Government operations. Same recommendation as is. I vote yes.

Vice Chair votes aye. Senator Hashimoto. Aye. Senator Moriwaki. Aye. Senator Awa excused measure passes.

Thank you. Moving on. Senate Bill 3002, blank waste. A planning act. Similarly recommendation is to pass as is. And we'll work with the stakeholders as we go into the next Committee. There's no discussion.

Chair's recommendation on the Committee on Waterland Culture and the Arts is to pass. SB3002 unamended with five Members present. Any voting with reservations? Any no votes? Major is adopted. Mr. Chair.

Thank you. And finally.

zero, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Please excuse me.

You got a deadline. Get a 3002. Same recommendation as is. I vote yes.

Okay. Vice Chair votes yes. Senator Hashimoto. Aye. Senator Morwaki. Aye. Senator Waz. Excused measure passes.

Thank you. Thank you. And finally, SB3067 relating to records, similarly recommendation to pass as is. Any discussion seeing none. Vice Chair. Yes.

The Committee on Waterland Culture and the Arts Chair's Recommendation to pass SB3067 unamended with 5 Members present. Any voting with reservations? Any no holds measures adopted? Mr.

Chair, thank you very much. Okay, thank you very much. Committee on Government Operations, same request. I vote yes for the Members present.

Are there any no votes or reservations? Hearing none of the measures adopted. Okay, thank you. We're done here. That takes us out. Thanks to the GVO Committee.