 I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey and today we have a very special guest and that is Scott Psyche, Speaker of the House of the Hawaii State Legislature. And Aloha Scott. Hi Aloha, Marcia. Thanks for having me today. Now, my first question, of course, is what is Speaker of the House? We all know, we hear it every day on the news about Nancy Pelosi and Speaker of the House. And it's always been surprised, oh, so-and-so is Speaker of the House. What is the Speaker of the House? Yeah, so the role is probably very similar to Nancy Pelosi's role in the Congress. The Speaker is elected by the members of the House to serve in that position. And the Speaker is basically like the, I would say like a combination of the administrator versus the facilitator slash mediator in the House, because it's really the Speaker's job to kind of just keep everyone, to keep everyone together. You know, we have 51 members of the House and everyone is elected in their own right. Everybody has a different district, different community, they have different perspectives and views on the issues. And it's the Speaker's job, working with the House leadership to help guide policies and to facilitate differences that the members may have on any given issue. So the Speaker is also responsible for appointing the committee chairs in the House and making other kinds of assignments, committee assignments for the members. So you, as a Speaker, does that mean that you make the assignments or do you, people say I would like to be on such and such a committee, or how does that work? So I, in making assignments, committee assignments, I sit down with each of the members and ask them for the areas that are of interest to them. So I've actually already, I've already done that. I just finished meeting with the members, as well as the incoming members about a week ago. So I have an idea of where everyone's, what their interests are, what their priorities are. I'm going to use that information to see if we can then appoint the committee chairs and appoint members to service committee members on those as well. You already know who the incoming members are, or are there any offices that still have to go to November? Yeah, there's some offices that are still have elections in November. So those are, those are tentative. But I have, I have an idea for those who we know that will be returning to the House. We've been already elected outright as far as what their interests are. We have a lot of new members. We'll have eight new members this year, because mostly because of members who have retired or run for other offices, such as the State Senate. But we'll have eight members, eight new members from different parts of the state. You know, there's a couple from the Big Island. There's a couple from different parts of Oahu. It's going to be, it's going to be an exciting group of people. I think you're going to see a diverse, a diverse group in terms of the gender background, work experience. I think they're going to add a lot to our House caucus. Now, we're talking about this new generation, the younger generation. Did you get a lot of new younger people or some? Yeah, so I don't know if people realize this, but when you look at the House composition with 51 members, over half of the members have served for less than 10 years. So, you know, and, and that's just because I think the turnover in the House is just greater. You have members who run for other other offices or we just, we just stopped running at a certain point in time. So the turnover is pretty great, great in the House and this is this year is an example we have, we'll have eight new members out of 51. Well, now, Chris Lee was moving from the House to the Senate. We don't know yet whether he will win that seat or not. Is that this is November, right? Right. Chris has a general election opponent. So we won't know until the general election date if he's elected to the Senate. So who replaced him? So he had, yeah, so there were several, there were several Democrats who ran for Chris's House seat. That's District 51. And the Democrat who prevailed in the primary is Lisa Martin. She is, she's, she's going to be a great representative. I think she's going to bring some depth and maturity to the House and experience in a lot of different kind of policy areas. Well, now, District 51. No, not 51. I think the Senate District is, is screwy. Senate District 25 is screwy because that is one of the, the neighbor islands, somewhere, all those islands out there. Waimanalo, Kailua, Hawaii, which is screwy. Makes no sense. Yeah. So District 51 does wrap, wraps around, wraps around, yeah. Waimanalo and then a portion of Hawaii. Portlock, yeah. Yeah, so that's, you know, that's the result of reapportionment. And so I'm glad you raised that because we have, we go through a reapportionment every 10 years in Hawaii. And it follows the federal census. So as you know, the census is going on right now. And once the census is completed in about half a year, then we will begin the state reapportionment process. Which means that the districts, the legislative districts will be redrawn for the 2022 elections. And we'll be appointing a reapportionment, a reapportionment commission that will redraw the, redraw the district maps. How do you decide on the members of the commission? Are they members of the legislature or members of the public? How does that work? Well, the reapportionment commission is something that is created by the state constitution. And the constitution provides that there are nine members on the commission. And the members are not elected officials. They are not legislators. The constitution is very specific that these be that these be non legislative people. And the, so there's the Senate president, the speaker, the Senate minority leader and the Senate, the House minority leader, these four people each appoint two individuals to the commission. So that's eight total. These eight people then appoint the ninth member who serves as a chair. So the commission is the way it's form is meant to be equals to provide equity between the majority and the minority party so that everybody has a fair say during the reapportionment process. Well, now you only have one Republican senator. Yeah, he's up for reelection. So what happens. Yeah, so that that if, if the, if the, if there is no Republican senator after this general election, then the cons, it's the constitution is silent on what to do in that situation. You know, my assumption is that the, the two seats that would be appointed by the Republican Senate minority leader would just go and would go unfilled. Really? Yeah, because there's no provision in the constitution to, to, to make up for that. Okay, so I want to be on the commission, because every year, since 1980 something or other. I forget that I live. They always forget, oh, there's people that living out there. And then they make up some kind of nonsense so that the district runs around and won't them over here. Every time we're in a different district, every time. This time I want to be on the commission so I can, my little island will be remembered. Sometimes we're over here. Sometimes we're over here. Yeah, sometimes the lines are just drawn arbitrarily just depends on arbitrary. And it's based upon population shifts. So, you know, if we see spikes in population in certain parts of the state, then you're going to have to, you know, increase, probably increase the number of seats within those areas. If the, if the increase is significant enough. And especially like that. The district wraps around and who's in, you know, that's ridiculous. There was one, there was a time where the, the Kauai, one of the Kauai House districts also included the Leward Coast on a walk. So the wine I area is a Kauai wine I district. But the constitution also does say that the commission should try to avoid canoe districts. And the commission over the past couple of cycles, I really tried to adhere to that. That's why the Kauai wine I district was, was eliminated. Well, okay. And the same distance, you know, the question about new districts. First of all, it's a great name canoe districts. As the legislator, for instance, Molochai. Does she get any of an office or travel or whatnot. I can question Maui. And is there any appropriate for her as opposed to the council meant the legislator in my district drive to all the district. Yeah. So the representative from that district, which is, which includes Hanna, Molochai and Lina, that's a very, that's a difficult area to represent. Because of the three islands and so we all neighborhood representatives do receive a travel allowance so they can fly back and forth basically between a Wahoo and their name and their island. In this case for this for this Hanna, Hanna Molochai and Lina district. We do give some extra funding for the member. Yeah. Do the members have new districts or neighbor island. Do they have an office on the neighbor island. No members do not have offices on the new islands. No, so they have to either work from home. I know some of them try to use space and the state government buildings on the new islands, or, you know, a site side job and they work out of their side job. Yeah, we don't provide offices for the legislators. What about that come to the session. Do they have to rent a place to stay. Yes, the neighbor, neighbor members receive per diem when they are on a Wahoo for the for the session. And they need to use that to to to pay for housing. It's, yeah, so it's, it's really difficult. It's very challenging for the neighborhood members because they have to basically move to Wahoo from January to early May. So they're basically away from home for four months. And, well, but yeah, so we try to accommodate them as much as possible. Well, yeah, let's talk about session, because we have to assume that people don't know the session is from January to May. Yeah, so the Constitution provides that the session begins on the third Wednesday in January, every January. So I was the third Wednesday. And the regular session runs for up to 60 legislative days, which usually so that excludes weekends and holidays. So that usually takes us to about early, early May. And then we can extend the session, you can extend the session. Yeah. Well, now you begin working though, October. So that's just to get bills, because people start sending in bills early. So I constantly remind our house members and they're probably tired of hearing me say this, but their work should really begin in June before the session starts for so they're working throughout the entire interim period throughout the entire summer and fall because it takes a long time to develop to develop legislation and to to to meet with people and to get, you know, to get comments and reaction from people. It's better to work on bills during the interim, rather than wait till the last minute and introduce them in the regular in the session. At that point, as you know, there's just not enough time, sometimes to focus in on on bills because the schedule is just so is so rushed at that point. Well, now, last year you had something about 1000 bills. How in the world is a legislator read 3000 bills. So we does that work. I send in a bill, like sends in the bill. This is what we want now. And it's a number and it goes wherever it goes. We did count last year. 2000. There was some from the first part of the term second. How in the world do you manage 3000 bills. How does a legislator read whatever bills. That's amazing to me. So, you know, the first thing is. So as far as the role of a legislator, aside from representing the district. As far as the role of a legislator, you know, in my opinion, kind of falls into, there's two basic responsibilities. The first is to introduce legislation. And the second is to vote on legislation. And so I feel that it is really important that members, you know, if they receive requests from people or organizations in their communities for legislation, then we should really try to help. So that's why you that's why you end up having, you know, over 2000 bills introduced in the house every year. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot of paper. It's a lot of it's a lot to to to read through. We rely on a committee system in the house to basically sift through the bills. So our committees, our committee chairs and our committee members are the ones who are responsible for identifying the bills that they feel should be. That's during the session. And so we have basically, although we start off with about 2000 bills in the house 1500 in the Senate 3500 bills total. At the end of session we end up with about maybe 200 250 bills that are actually approved by the legislature and what go to the governor for approval. Although in the past few years, it's been less, it's been less than 250. Okay, now we have a session, I guess they're sessions right. Is that what it's called by any of them. Okay. So then that means we for anything that was left over was over. This year, because you've got new legislators is called to start all over again. Is that correct. Yeah, so after the January election, it starts all over again yet we operate on a two year, basically two year cycle it's called the biennium. And all of the bills that are introduced in the first year, which is going to be January 2021. They're not that that are still alive at the end of session carry over to the next next year so there's still there's still alive for for two year for two years for two year biennium. And I had one that because of the screwiness with this over 19 that it was just left somewhere who knows where will it be moved, or is it over. The bill for last year or from last year. Because of the COVID and the whole session went screwy. The bills that did not get attended to the end before May. What happened to them are they just calm. So those bills are all pop because we actually finished our session, we finished our regular session in July. So at that point when we adjourned on all the bills. We're working. Instead of stopping and may you kept working until blood. Yeah, so what happened was because of the pandemic, we were halfway through session when the pandemic hit. That was in mid March so we stopped our session. We were supposed to end in early May, but we stopped the session we suspended it on March 17, and then came back again waited and then came back in. In May for a short time, and then took another recess, and then came back in, in early July to finish up the session. So it was, um, yeah, the session was held in like three different phases this year, because of the pandemic. So that means that any bills that did not make it the governor's office, it's over. They have to start all over again. Yeah. We start over again in January 2021. Okay, now, anyone that's new to this, tell us what the process is. I say, I want such and such a bill. What do I do? How does it go from year to year to year? So if you have an idea for a bill or suggestion for a bill, you should probably see your state representative or your state senator and ask that they introduce the bill for you. Once the bill is introduced, and there is a deadline for bill introduction, so you should contact your legislator as soon as possible, because the deadline is usually in about a week and a half after opening day starts. So it's a really short fuse for sure. So, if I have a new legislator got elected. So, they get office now or because if I have an old legislator that's been there for several sessions, I can go to their office and say I would like this. They can work on it now. What about the new ones? Yes, the new legislators will take over the day after the general election. They may not have an office day after that. So, they may not have their physical office yet because we have to clean out offices and reassign people. So it takes, it may take, you know, a few weeks for someone to actually get their office, but they will have workspace at the Capitol. So, you know, there will be a phone for a phone number for them. So you can cut and as well as email so you can contact them at the Capitol. Make your request for the bill. Make sure that it gets introduced. You have the point that it's introduced. So, in the house, I would, the speaker is responsible for referring the bill to committees, the committees that would potentially be hearing the bill and advancing the bill. So, the bill will get assigned to committees. If the committees hear the bill and then advance it, then it goes to the Senate. And, you know, you start the process over again in the Senate where the Senate committees would have to hear the bill. And then if both sides approve the bill, then it goes to the governor for approval at the end of the session. Are there, this just got the newspaper about the Senate and House, a special COVID-19 committees. What are, what are you doing and whether they didn't read it yet? What are your committees doing about COVID-19 since you're the House? Yeah, so the House created a select COVID-19 committee on economic and financial preparedness and we approved this committee on March 7 and had a meeting the week after that. The purpose of the committee was to just prepare for the financial was to prepare the state and the legislature for the financial and economic impact of COVID-19. And our committee is, is made up of over 30 people, only five are state representatives. The rest are from the private and nonprofit sector and as well as a union sector. And we meet every other week. We just had a meeting on Monday. It's at 10 a.m. and you can see it watching on the level, channel 54. Our committee is working, we want to work with the governor and the administration to help with public health monitoring, as well as economic reopening in areas such as travel. You know, we want to, we want to help, we want to help the administration on get some plans together. So, now, this is an ongoing committee, is it? It's not limited to a time zone or you're going to stay until we get this fixed because next year's budget is going to be really screwy. Yeah, so this is our committee is ongoing and I anticipate that we'll, we'll keep meeting. And you're right, this session, when we start up in January, one of the first things we're going to have to start to work on is the state budget and the general economic conditions in our state. I expect that there'll be a shortfall in the state budget because we'll have less tax revenue being collected at that point. So we're going to have to make adjustments in the state budget. It's going to be, yeah, it could be a, it could be a rough year for everyone. Unfortunately. But that's why it's important for us to number one, restore public health and safety, and then number two, reopen the economy, while assuring people that it'll be safe to do so. Now, real quick, we only have a little bit of time left. You are the press becoming president of the national legislators. Yes, the National Conference of State Legislatures, which is the largest organization in the United States, it, it, the members include all of the state legislators from this all 50 states as well as from the US territories. And basically NCSO is that services as a clearinghouse that provides leadership and policy programs for state legislators throughout throughout the year and I'm the first. I'm the first Hawaii person, the first Asian to be the to be in this position. So I'm the president elect. And I should be to become president in August 2021. Oh, great. Well, congratulations. Thanks. And now, I'm going to ask you, we can have you tell us dedicate somebody once a month from the house, talk to us about what's going on with the legislature so we can date with how what bills are there are, how they're moving. We need to call in the dogs to report a bill. If you can do that for me, we will all be very happy. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Marsha will do that. It's just let me know what date, what date and time you want us to have someone with you because I think it's going to be really important and the house. We've told ourselves that it's going to be really important to keep the public informed of what's happening at the legislature. So your show gives us a great, you know, a great opportunity to reach to reach people and to give them updates. And now we are, we're live now, and then you will get a link to the show. You can send it out to whomever is on YouTube and video and a lot of places. So you can reach as many people as you like. Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks for doing that. Well, thank you. And luck with this new session. We will see you soon. Thanks Marsha take care.