STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2133

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.B. No. 2435

S.D. 1

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Thirty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2024

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Hawaiian Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 2435 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HAWAIIAN HOME LANDS,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to authorize the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to administer a Lease Award Program for beneficiaries on the homestead lease waiting list who are sixty years or older or terminally ill, under certain conditions.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from Hoʻomana Pono, LLC, and three individuals.

Your Committee received comments on this measure from the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

Your Committee finds that as recently as 2022, there were more than twenty-eight thousand native Hawaiian beneficiaries on the homestead lease waiting list. When beneficiaries on the homestead lease waiting list pass away prior to receiving a lease award, the beneficiary also loses the ability to have their heirs inherit a lease. This measure will help qualified successors gain homestead leases.

Your Committee has amended this measure by:

(1) Specifying that the purpose of this measure is to allow the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to administer an undivided interest lease award program;

(2) Specifying that qualified successors shall be of at least twenty-five per cent blood quantum;

(3) Clarifying that the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands may administer the undivided interest lease award program for certain native Hawaiians at the sole discretion of the Hawaiian Homes Commission;

(4) Inserting a definition of "terminally ill";

(5) Providing the Department of Hawaiian Home lands with two years from its effective date to administer this measure;

(6) Making the measure effective on either the date congressional consent is deemed unnecessary or on the date of consent of the United State Congress; and

(7) Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Hawaiian Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2435, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2435, S.D. 1, and be referred to your Committees on Judiciary and Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Hawaiian Affairs,

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MAILE S.L. SHIMABUKURO, Chair