STAND. COM. REP. NO.2234

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2002

RE: S.B. No. 2357

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2002

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Education, to which was referred S.B. No. 2357 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to require the Department of Education to pay all new hires within four weeks.

Your Committee received testimony in support of the measure from the Hawaii State Teachers Association and Hawaii Government Employees Association. Your Committee received testimony in opposition to the measure from the Department of Education. Your Committee received comments from the Department of Accounting and General Services.

Your Committee finds that the Department of Education is working to ameliorate the tardiness of initial payments to new hires. However, it is an ongoing concern of such long standing that no further delay is acceptable. If, as some testimony indicated, internal departmental policies of the Department of Education and Department of Accounting and General Services must be changed to deal with the problem adequately, then let them be changed – and expeditiously. This problem cannot wait another year for solution. It is too deleterious to employee morale and welfare and unacceptable to hold public service to a different standard than the private sector.

Your Committee has amended the measure by requiring that all newly hired Department of Education employees receive their paychecks on the second pay period after the date of hire instead of within four weeks as originally drafted.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Education that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2357, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2357, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Education,

____________________________

NORMAN SAKAMOTO, Chair