Bill Text: HI HB1375 | 2013 | Regular Session | Amended

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Bill Title: Human Services; Welfare; Financial Assistance Advisory Council

Spectrum: Slight Partisan Bill (Democrat 10-4)

Status: (Enrolled - Dead) 2013-04-25 - Conference committee meeting to reconvene on 04-26-13 1:45PM in conference room 229. [HB1375 Detail]

Download: Hawaii-2013-HB1375-Amended.html

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STAND. COM. REP. NO. 882

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                  

 

RE:    H.B. No. 1375

       S.D. 1

 

 

 

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Seventh State Legislature

Regular Session of 2013

State of Hawaii

 

Madam:

 

     Your Committee on Human Services, to which was referred H.B. No. 1375 entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO HUMAN SERVICES,"

 

begs leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to:

 

     (1)  Establish a task force that shall develop a restructured welfare payment system; and

 

     (2)  Re-establish and fund the exit and retention bonus program to encourage welfare recipients to transition back into the workforce.

 

     Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the University of Hawaii Bridge to Hope, Catholic Charities Hawaii, Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, and one individual.  Your Committee received comments on this measure from the Department of Human Services.

 

     Your Committee finds that people living below the poverty line are especially hard hit in Hawaii.  A family of four in Hawaii pays sixty-one percent more for food than families on the mainland.  The cost for housing in Hawaii is also the highest in the nation.  Seventy-five percent of people at or below the poverty line spend more than fifty percent of their income on housing.  There is a need for government policies to support this group in escaping poverty.

 

     Your Committee has amended this measure by:

 

     (1)  Deleting language that would have established a task force to develop a restructured welfare payment system;

 

     (2)  Inserting language that requests the Financial Assistance Advisory Council to assist the Department of Human Services in proposing recommendations to restructure the welfare payment system and report any findings to the Legislature no later than twenty days prior to the convening of the 2014 Regular Session;

 

     (3)  Deleting language that would have re-established and funded the exit and retention bonus program; and

 

     (4)  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 Human Services that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 1375, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 1375, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Human Services,

 

		____________________________ SUZANNE CHUN OAKLAND, Chair