Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

Sen. Laura Thielen and others are working hard on the issue of repealing the Public Land Development Corporation law that threatens Hawaii’s public land and open spaces. If you haven’t yet been involved, please consider at least submitting testimony. It’s easy—see below for the bill number and the link to click to have your say.

But first, you may want to check out Sen. Thielen’s Web post or Facebook page. Sen. Thielen is doing everything one can do in terms of communicating to the public on this issue. The rest is up to us.

The text below is from her broadcast email this morning. I’ve left her contact information at the end of her message.

We need your testimony supporting the full repeal of the PLDC.  Remember – the PLDC law has not been repealed yet.  We just finished the first step of a three step process. 

Step 1:   House and Senate pass their own repeal bills

Step 2:  Senate must pass House bill

Step 3:  Governor must sign final bill or let it become law without his signature.

We’re on Step 2 right now.  The Senate Committee on Water and Land has scheduled a hearing on the House bill repealing the PLDC.

It’s very important to ask the Senate Committee members to approve HB 1133 without any amendments. If the bill is amended, it will go into conference committee.

We haven’t posted an explanation of conference committees yet. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, that’s when the House and Senate Committee Chairs get together to negotiate final changes to a bill. No public testimony is taken; one Chair can refuse to meet; many bills die in conference committee; many unexpected changes may happen at the last minute.

We don’t need any more drama or suspense on this issue – or, since St. Patrick’s Day is around the corner, no shenanigans either - it’s time to put it to rest. The Senate should adopt the House bill without amendment.

Tuesday’s hearing is just the first step the House bill will take in the Senate. It will then go to the Ways and Means Committee, and then to the full Senate for final vote. If we can get it through the Water Land Committee without amendment, I believe we have a very good chance of the bill passing out, and to the Governor for final action.

Please keep in mind that hearing notices can be amended and bills taken off the hearing, as was done in the past. Getting a lot of testimony in now may help avoid a repeat of that problem.

Please submit testimony to the Committee on Water and Land and ask your friends and family to do the same.

You can submit testimony on-line by clicking here.

When you get to the Legislature’s online testimony site, enter the bill number (HB 1133) and click on “Support” if you support a full repeal of the PLDC.

Adding your own reasons as to why you support repealing the PLDC will make your testimony more powerful. It doesn’t have to be fancy or long to be effective. Please make sure it’s not rude or insulting.

It's also effective to send emails to the Committee members. You can copy and paste our email addresses, below:

sensolomon@capitol.hawaii.gov; senshimabukuro@capitol.hawaii.gov; sendelacruz@capitol.hawaii.gov; senihara@capitol.hawaii.gov; senruderman@capitol.hawaii.gov ; senthielen@capitol.hawaii.gov; senslom@capitol.hawaii.gov

Stay focused.  Together we can see this repeal through to a successful end.

Senator Laura H. Thielen
Kailua, Waimanalo, Hawaii Kai
415 Beretania Street, Rm 223
Honolulu, HI 96813

(808) 587-8388 (o)
(808) 587-7240 (fax)
senthielen@capitol.hawaii.gov
www.senatorlaurathielen.com www.facebook.com/SenatorLauraThielen

Permalink posted by Larry @ 3/13/2013 10:53:00 AM