STAND. COM. REP. NO. 773

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                  

 

RE:    S.B. No. 1203

       S.D. 2

 

 

 

Honorable Colleen Hanabusa

President of the Senate

Twenty-Fifth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2009

State of Hawaii

 

Madam:

 

     Your Committee on Judiciary and Government Operations, to which was referred S.B. No. 1203, S.D. 1, entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO COMMUNITY SERVICE,"

 

begs leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose of this measure is to:

 

     (1)  Require the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations' Office of Community Services to establish by no later than January 1, 2012, a mandatory program to require all state residents between the ages of sixteen and twenty to serve a minimum of five-hundred hours of community service; and

 

     (2)  Credit participants $3 per hour in scholarship funds that shall be used to finance any educational program chosen by participants until the age of thirty, with all funds earned by participants to be placed in a trust fund.

 

     Your Committee believes that this measure encourages active participation in community service, gives youth a vested interest in the future of the State, offers economic incentives to participants, and provides an educational opportunity to Hawaii's youth that they might otherwise choose to forgo.

 

     Your Committee finds that a voluntary community service program with appropriate incentives might better effectuate the intent of this measure rather than a mandatory program.

 

     Your Committee has amended this measure by providing for voluntary participation in the new program and making it available to residents between the ages of fifteen and eighteen years.

 

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary and Government Operations that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1203, S.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1203, S.D. 2.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Judiciary and Government Operations,

 

 

 

____________________________

BRIAN T. TANIGUCHI, Chair