Bill Text: HI SB2174 | 2012 | Regular Session | Amended

Hawaii Senate Bill 2174 (Prior Session Legislation)

Bill Title: Demographic Data; State Agencies; Publication; Ethnicities; Office of Hawaiian Affairs Package

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)

Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2012-02-13 - (S) Report adopted; Passed Second Reading and referred to WAM. [SB2174 Detail]

Download: Hawaii-2012-SB2174-Amended.html

STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2107

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.B. No. 2174

Honorable Shan S. Tsutsui

President of the Senate

Twenty-Sixth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2012

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs, to which was referred S.B. No. 2174 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO THE COLLECTION OF DEMOGRAPHIC DATA BY STATE AGENCIES, BOARDS, AND COMMISSIONS,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to require:

(1) Any state agency, board, or commission that directly or by contract collects demographic data as to ancestry or ethnic origin to use separate collection categories and tabulations for specified categories;

(2) The data collected pursuant to the different collection categories and tabulations to be included in every demographic report on ancestry or ethnic origin by the state agency, board, or commission published or released on or after July 1, 2013, and to be made available to the public in accordance with state and federal law, except for personal identifying information, which shall be deemed confidential;

(3) State agencies, boards, and commissions to make any demographic data collected publicly available, subject to all applicable state and federal laws regarding personal identifying information, by posting the data on the internet web site of the agency on or before July 1, 2013, and annually thereafter; and

(4) State agencies, within eighteen months after the decennial United States Census for the year 2020 is released to the public, to update their data collection to reflect the additional categories.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Testimony in opposition was received from the Department of Education and University of Hawai�i System.

Your Committee finds that Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders represent 48.6 percent of the State's population. While Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders are often misrepresented as a homogeneous group, they are an extremely diverse group, with ethnicities from over thirty different countries. Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander communities in this State experience diverse social, educational, health, and economic differences that are unique to their respective communities.

Due to this diversity, the United States Office of Management and Budget's Statistical Policy Directive No. 15, entitled "Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting," separated the "Asian and Pacific Islander" category into two distinct and separate categories, now called "Asians" and "Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders," and these two distinct categories were used in the 2000 United States Census. The United States Census Bureau currently reports data for more than twenty different ethnicities within these two categories. This measure mandates state agencies to collect and report demographic data in line with the federal practices.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2174 and recommends that it pass Second Reading and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs,

____________________________

WILL ESPERO, Chair