STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2306

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.B. No. 2594

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. 2594 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 allow any qualified successor of a beneficiary who died before receiving a lease to file a claim for a lease award within four years of the effective date of this measure.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from four 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 waitlist. When beneficiaries on the waitlist pass away prior to receiving a lease award, the beneficiary often loses the ability to have their heirs inherit a lease. Your Committee also finds that many successors to deceased beneficiaries are not of fifty percent Hawaiian blood quantum and therefore are not qualified for a lease award. This measure will allow successors of at least twenty-five percent blood quantum to file a claim with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands for lease awards so that the heirs of deceased beneficiaries may succeed to a lease within four years of the effective date of this measure.

Your Committee has amended this measure by:

(1) Specifying that this measure shall be known as the "Fred Keakaokalani Cachola Act";

(2) Specifying that undivided interest lease awards may be posthumously granted to qualified successors by the Department of Hawaiian Home Land at the sole discretion of the Hawaiian Homes Commission;

(3) Specifying that qualified successors shall be of at least twenty-five percent blood quantum;

(4) Providing the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands with two years to adopt rules to implement this measure;

(5) Amending section 1 to reflect its amended purpose;

(6) Making it effective upon either the date that congressional approval is deemed necessary or the date of consent by the United States 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. 2594, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2594, 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