 Thank you very much for registering for this seminar on how the legislature will be conducted this session and some of the policy matters and legislation that will be discussed. Before I introduce the speakers for the seminar, let me mention some preliminary matters. I'm Bob Toyofuku of the Pacific Law Institute and I'll be the moderator for this morning. What we plan to cover is, will the Capitol be completely open? Will it be similar to free COVID times? And will the hearings and testimony be similar to how they handled it in 2022? In other words, hybrid, both in-person and virtual. What about making appointments with legislators? And it's things similar to that that all of you are interested in. If you have any questions, please write them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and not the chat and we will answer as many as possible as time permits. If anyone needs to utilize captions, press the CC button at the bottom of your Zoom screen and then press request. Lastly, please take a moment at the end of the seminar this morning to fill out the evaluations which will help us as we move forward with these different forums. Some basic information. The legislative website was updated and you can see it at many of you know it's capital.hawaii.gov. There's a lot of general information and frequently asked questions. The public access room created a guide to the site. So click on that and you can get more information. I'd like to now take a moment to introduce the speakers for the seminar. First of all, we have Senator, President Ronald Kochi and I want to mention that he has taken the time he's at a conference on the mainland but he's taking some time to make some comments. We also have Speaker of the House Scott Psyche, Senator Carl Rhodes who is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Representative Della Albulotti who is chair of the House Health and Homelessness Committee, Senator Gilbert Keith Agaran who is vice chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, Representative Lisa Kitugawa vice chair of the House Finance Committee and Robert Harris who is a executive director of the State Ethics Commission. You know, I very much appreciate the time they have set aside to inform all of you how the 2023 session will be conducted and some of the issues that will definitely be before the legislature. So let me now turn it over to Senate President and House Speaker to make some comments. As I mentioned, Senate President is at a conference on the mainland and so we are going to hear him on audio and his handsome photo is on the screen. Here you go, Ron, off to you, Ron. Well, Aloha and thank you, Bob, for using such a wonderfully doctored photograph of myself. I appreciate what you and Tink Tank tech are doing for the third year in trying to keep the people who are transacting business at the Capitol informed about the process and procedures and the upcoming bills. The Capitol will be open for each individual member of the Senate and I'll speak for the Senate operation only. They all have their own unique place in life, whether their age or if they do have any underlying health conditions. So as far as making an appointment, I would call send an email. You might have a little different response from each individual member about how they feel that they can meet with you safely, but people will be able to come into the Capitol, walk around, attend the hearings and hang out on the railing and see the comings and goings of the daily activity. For opening day, we're going to have 60% capacity on the floor and while we wanna be open, we wanna be open in a safe and responsible way. And so we're gonna take some steps towards resuming to 100% normalcy, but COVID spread still tells us that we need to be careful and we need to use some caution in how we reopen. So that's going to be the policy in the Senate. Clearly at the top of the list is still affordable housing, how the 600 million for those on the wait list in Hawaiian homelands, that's gonna get deployed, dealing with homelessness, it's all in a package after transition housing, you need somewhere permanent to go and we need to have places that are affordable. We continue to work towards the learning loss and what are we gonna do in K through 12 as well as looking at pre-K, but I don't wanna get too far into the weeds that's why I have Senators Keith Agaran and Rhodes representing the Senate, but certainly from a 30,000 foot level that's there. And I'd simply close with, there's a lot of discussion about the surplus money we have and we've gotten a lot of requests or suggested ideas of how we can spend the money, but I just wanna caution everyone that that is a lot of money one-time windfall from the federal funds we receive and they will not be a recurring stream of revenue to sustain recurring costs. And so we need to show some prudence in how we spend the money and a lot of it should go into one-time non-recurring investments so that we are sure that we can sustain the government that we have. And we have projects like the stadium, a new prison facility, certainly in the affordable housing repair and new construction for schools. And so there'll be a lot of those areas. So I appreciate it and I'd say thank you very much and I'm gonna sign off now, thank you. Thank you very much, Senate President and enjoy the conference that you're at on the mainland. I'd like to know as House Speaker Scott Psyche to make a few comments. Scott? Hey, Bob, thank you very much for inviting me this morning. Thank you to the Pacific Law Institute and Think Tech for sponsoring this event. I'm just, I'm really happy that you're once again doing this because this forum is so important for people who want to participate in the legislative process. So as, you know, I wanted to do a shout out to the Senate. As the Senate President mentioned, the Capitol will be open and I wanna thank the Senate for just working so closely with the House to ensure that all of our proceedings will be accessible, that people can enter the building. And we even, you know, work with the governor's office to reopen the public parking in the basement. So there's the basement public parking will be open, although the number of stalls is limited. But I think that's a good start for us in this new year. The House, you know, will continue to hold committee hearings through a hybrid system. So people, testifiers have the option of participating either in person or through the YouTube system. So we, you know, again, I wanna thank the Senate for continuing that practice. I think it's something that is here to stay. The legislature really wants to give people an opportunity to participate, even if it's not in person. I wanna also mention that the legislature did redesign our website, it's capital.hoi.gov. If you haven't seen it yet, you should take a look at it. It's pretty sleek and streamlined. I think it is much improved. Also take a look at that. The other thing is general, there is a deadline for grand and aid applications this year. We've decided to once again offer GIA support to nonprofits. The deadline for submission is January 20 and the details for those applications are found on our website. And, you know, as the Senate president mentioned, there are some, you know, top some issues that are percolating to the surface this year. I wanted to also, you know, clarify that the Senate president and I spoke on spotlight a couple of weeks ago and we were asked about some of these hot topics. But then our comments are characterized as being, you know, in opposition to Governor Green's initiatives and that's really not accurate because I think what the Senate president and I tried to explain was that, you know, we're gonna take up the governor's initiatives and we're gonna work with him to see what we could approve at the end of session. So I think we're totally in sync with the governor and we want to work very closely with him. We've got a very close working relationship. But, you know, on the House side, similar to the Senate, we will be taking up economic or financial relief. Vice chair Lisa Kitagawa here is on this panel and show. I'm sure some more detail on our initiatives there. We also have affordable housing initiatives that'll be led by our new housing chair, representative Chor Hashimoto, homeless initiatives, by our new chair, representative Dela Albaladi and energy issues led by our energy and environmental protection chair, representative Nicol Owen. And, you know, before I get off, I just wanted to also mention that the House will have 18 new members with 18 freshmen members. And we also have a bunch of new committee chairs and new leadership, House leadership members. So I think it's gonna be an exciting year for all of us. I know that all of these members are very excited to be here and to start off this year. And we look forward to working with all of you throughout 2023. So thanks again, Bob, for having us. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. We'd like to now turn the program over to Senator Rhodes and representative Baladi, who will take some time to review some of the basic procedures that will be followed in the 2023 session. Just to let you know, both representative Baladi and Senator Gilagoran did participate in the past couple of years when we had this forum. So I'll turn it over first to Rep Baladi, who will give you kind of a quick overview of issues that many of you probably are interested in. Rep Baladi. Bob, just to clarify, do you wanna go over issues in the health committee or just overview of the basic procedure? No, first to go over issues on how the session's gonna run. And I think many people have been on the program last year. So they're somewhat familiar with how the 2022 session ran. But I think it's a good review and there are probably some new people on the panel, I mean, in the audience as well. So I do wanna reiterate what Senate president and speaker said, the Capitol is open. So Ekomomai, we want to welcome the public back. We are still preserving virtual testimony, which I think is one of the silver linings of the pandemic really fast forwarded us into the 21st century to be able to do remote virtual testimony. So for those audience members who were concerned that we would lose that, we are not losing that. I will say the one thing about being open, one of the things that we are gonna do require for people coming into the Capitol is there will be checkpoint entrances, much like many of our government buildings now, if you go into the court system, there's a single entry point. If you go into Honolulu Halle, there's a place where you need, or some of the city buildings, there's a place where you need to go to check in. So for the Capitol, it's going to be at the Diamond Head Makai elevators on the ground level, where you will have to present a photo ID to be able to come in. And then on the bottom level, the parking level below the Capitol, it is a rotunda area and a similar situation. Again, it's very simple, very easy, just need to present a photo ID and then you'll be welcome and into the Capitol. In terms of the schedule and the timeline, Bob, we really are returning back to pre-COVID times. And so the legislative timetable is posted on the Capitol website. I really urge all of your participants to go to the new Capitol website. There is also a video that you can watch to see how you can navigate the website as well as register and have an account so that you can submit written testimony. So really, really important. There's a question in the Q and A. It's capital, C-A-P-I-T-O-L, which is where you need to go to see the new and fantastic website. I'll start with one thing really important for deadlines. Speaker Psyche mentioned the deadline for GIA applications. Another big critical deadline is bill introduction deadline, which is Wednesday, January 25th. And just because it's a little different than the Senate, the House has had, by custom and practice, since 1998, a program where we do have bill introduction limits. So House members are limited to a bill introduction of 20 bills. Chairs are given an additional allotment of 15 bills to introduce. And then caucuses, again, by custom and practice, have also been a little bit restricted in the number because we really want them to vet their bills. And so for the House side, by custom and practice, caucuses recognized by the speaker are allowed to introduce five bills per caucus as part of their official package. So those are some of them really just upfront deadlines that people should be aware of, Bob. Thanks. You know what Rep Bellotti just mentioned, especially for those that want to introduce bills in the legislative session, it's very important. Keep in mind the unlimited deadline for introduction by legislators is on two days after we open on January 18th. So on January 20th, that's an unlimited type of open period where legislators can submit as many bills as possible. However, with some limitation as to the total number they can submit. And previously, in the next three days, 23, 24 and 25, they can introduce five bills per day. So if you're not ready to have a bill introduced, you need to talk to whoever you would like to introduce the bill for you to save some space to have them agree to introduce your bill. That becomes very, very crucial. And the last other thing, I'll go ahead, Della. Well, Bob, after the bill introduction process, then we're gonna dive right into hearings. And I'm very, very excited to actually be returning to be a chair. We are, like I said, gonna have a hybrid system. So everyone is encouraged to submit their testimony via the website so that you can be a part of the process and so that the members can see your testimony in advance. Those pieces of testimony, as in the past, will be prepared by our vice chairs. I wanna recognize that we're going to have, as Speaker Psyche said, 16 to 18 new members. Two of our new members have not yet been appointed. So we still are in a little bit of flux. And those two members, of course, are gonna be replacing our dearly beloved representatives, Ryan Yamane and JV Tokioka. So there really is quite a bit of change in the house with these 16 to 18 new members who are gonna be part of the house. There are six new chairs, new chairs who have not chaired before and had other responsibilities, but six new chairs. And then, of course, 12 new vice chairs. And so I would also urge people to have a little bit of patience. We're learning. We will get it to speed very quickly. We're already seeing our new members doing very well. But again, sign up early, test your processes, make sure you can submit your testimony. And then when you come in and testify, I really urge people to participate. In fact, that's one of the main messages coming from our Chief Clerk. Please, please participate. We are open. In that participation, I will say that for me as a chair as a preference, I'm going to, of course, balance the hybrid environment. But there is a value in being in-person. So to your audience members, Bob, I think if they want to participate in-person, please come on down to the Capitol. I will also say that one of the things that I think is really engaging about in-person testimony is the exchange that can happen in the Q&A. And so sometimes you miss that in the hybrid setting. And so again, if it's something really important, you don't have to be here. We can engage virtually, but I would also urge people, and we're going to be urging for myself again, as a preference as a chair, really going to be urging department heads to be present and in the room. And be there because the questions and answers that have to happen in the conversation that is engaged in by the community members is critical in that hearing process. Again, there's going to be new chairs in terms of time limits for offering up testimony. It really depends on the chair and also the volume that may be present in a particular hearing. So I would expect that some chairs will be imposing time limits, especially if we have really heavy agendas. That is in part driven by the fact that we have morning committees and afternoon committees. And morning committees really only have this 8.30 to noon block in which we can conduct our business. So the limitations are limitations, not because we don't want people to participate, the limitations because we don't have enough time in the day. Members have to get, House members have to get to the house floor by 12 noon because that's when our sessions start and we need to be present for that. So again, I urge patients with folks, I urge you to really be in contact with the staff of the committees. You can contact the vice chairs committee clerk or the chairs committee clerk. If there are questions about what are the preferences of the chairs, you can look to the website for the guidance about how you contact those committee clerks. You can look to the website and the hearing notices for guidance on what's going to be expected if you need additional aid, auxiliary aids for those who might be disabled. And so all of those things are in place to really encourage participation. And I think that's all I'll say for now on this hearing. Somebody asked the question, I'll just answer it. They wanted to know, you're right, Della, there's gonna be, there's 16 new legislators in the house and there are gonna be two more because Rep Tokioke and Rep Imani are going, I have resigned already and are going into Governor Green's administration. The question was, how do they detect who the new legislators are? There is no list on the website that says a certain representative or senator is new, just recently elected. Initially, when there was a photo of all the senators and reps, they only had photos of existing legislators in comments basically, they got re-elected. You just have to go through it because I've been lobbying for a long time. I know all the legislators that were re-elected and who the new legislators are. But do the best you can with that. And there are two brand new legislators in the Senate. Two, one Republican, one Democrat were elected. But the others, I think you would recognize because there are two council members that were elected to the Senate and two representatives that were elected to the Senate. But anyway, we'll try and handle some of the other questions, what? I'd like to now turn it over to Senator Carl Rhodes to add anything on on the general overview of how the session is gonna run and anything particular to the Senate. Senator Rhodes. Thanks, Bob. Yeah, no, I think Representative Bellotti has described the overall situation very accurately. There are a couple of minor but fairly important differences between procedure in the Senate and the House that can affect people who are testifying. The first is that for, when we hear a bill we have to give 72 hours notice whereas in the House, they only have to give 48. So we give you a little more time for the hearings. The other important difference is that the House hears every time it's referred to a committee, they hear the bill. Our second committees, we are allowed to hear the bill but we almost never do. It's almost always a decision-making only. This is driven largely by the fact that we have confirmations to do. Now I was in the House for 10 years. I don't think I realized how much time and effort was involved with that until I got over to the Senate. Especially there are certain committees that just get overwhelmed, consumer protection as dozens of nominees that they're supposed to confirm or not confirm and health is another one where there's just so many. So that's why we take that sort of shortcut on the second committees just for time purposes. The other thing that we don't do very often even though the rules would allow for it is we don't generally do triple referrals. So in the House, that's kind of the reason their deadlines are short is because sometimes their windows, the chair's windows of opportunity to hear a bill are very short. So that 24 hours does sometimes make a difference especially for that middle referral of a triple. Other than that, I think those are the areas where there's enough of a difference between the House and Senate procedure that it's worth noting. Rep Bellotti and Senator Rose, while Rep Bellotti was going over some things, I was looking at the Q&A and I can't remember, Dela, if you did talk about that, but on the safety protocols, did you mention that? Is the Capitol still gonna require an ID or anything to get in or is it gonna be completely open? Yes, the photo ID is going to need to be shown at the security checkpoints. Okay, it's gonna be similar to, yeah, go ahead, sorry. Someone asked in the chat if employee IDs will be sufficient. I believe they will be State of Hawaii IDs will be sufficient. And so just have a photo ID license, that should be sufficient. I also noticed Bob in the chat, a question from Lila about the introduction limits for House members. The introduction of 20 per legislator or per House member is as a primary introducer. So members can sign on as secondary introducers for as many bills as possible. It's the introduction as a primary introducer that House of Representatives have limits. Great, the last thing, in terms of you have an ID check but there's no temperature check or need to show your vaccination card or anything, right? No, those requirements have been dropped. Yeah, okay, great. I'd like, before we get to some of the policy issues that we're gonna discuss over the next one hour, I'd like to congratulate all of the 16 new members that were elected to the House and the two senators that were elected to the Senate. And I think you know that Representative Aquino and Representative McKelvie left the House, ran for the Senate and got elected. And Councilperson Carol Fukunaga, who used to be a Senator, is now back in the Senate. And so we have that and Brandon Elefante, Brandon Elefante, who was a Council member for two terms, ran for the Senate and was elected to the Senate. So those are the new members in the Senate. I won't take the time right now to go through all the new members in the House. But congratulations and good luck as you start your first legislative session. I think we have another new Senator too, Tim Richards as well. Oh yeah, the Democratic Senator, sorry. And Ava, the new Republican Senator, right, yeah. Okay, we're gonna take the next hour until 1030 to go over some of the issues that will definitely come up. And first of all, I'd like to go to Senator Karl Rhodes who's chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And just to mention, there are two Supreme Court justices that have to retire because they reached age 70 and say they've already submitted their resignation. And so Governor Josh Green will be appointing two new justices. So that's one issue that's gonna come up. And I mentioned to Senator Rhodes to mention any other issues that gonna come up in the Senate Judiciary, there's a lot of media attention to firearms, et cetera. So I'll turn it over to Senator Rhodes to mention some of those policy issues. All right, thanks Bob. Yes, as you say, there are gonna be two Supreme Court nominations this year. The process, the thumbnail of the process for those of you don't necessarily pay a lot of attention to it is that you can be nominated to or you can volunteer to be a Supreme Court justice. And at first you go to the Judicial Selection Commission, the Judicial Selection Commission. That's the nominees or the people who have indicated interest in being a Supreme Court justice. And then they submit a list of four to six people to the governor. The governor gets to choose one of them, of course. Well, in this case, they get to choose two, but there'll be two separate lists, one for each of the two that are available. And once they've done their vetting and decided which of the four to six that they want, then they send it on to the Senate for confirmation or not. So that's the basic process until it gets to the Senate. The Senate then has 30 days to either confirm them or to reject them. And I'm chair of the Judiciary Committee, so I'm the one who is most heavily involved in that. And usually we schedule the hearings about three weeks after the nomination's been made. What that allows people to do is it allows other senators to meet with them, allows me to meet with them. We do more background checks. We try to be sure that we're getting people who are ethically, you know, that there are no ethical problems. And then we have a hearing and generally we, well, I've always had time limits on my hearing ever since I was Labor chair, starting back in 2009, I guess, I've always had a two minute time limit. And it's because just the volume of testimony, sometimes it's so great that you have to, you just have to limit it. Some members will often call you back up for questions. So even though if you only have two minutes, just straight testimony, you'll often get more than that if somebody on the committee has more questions for you. Once the committee has met, we vote. And if we approve, well, whether we approve or not, the nominee goes to the floor for a full Senate vote. Generally, you know, it's unusual that a nominee gets rejected, but it does happen occasionally. And I think that's pretty much the summary on the Supreme Court justices. Other issues that I think we're almost inevitably going to come up are, and those of you who are familiar with the Obrero decision from last summer, we did actually reach an agreement on a bill over the summer, but it was, and the timing of it was such that we didn't get it. By that point, it was too late to really have a special session. So we put it off until now. Unfortunately, the grand jurids were able to keep up with the demand from the prosecutors for recharging people that had their charges dropped because of the Obrero decision. So I think that's almost for sure. I would guess that there'll be something, there was a US Supreme Court decision called the Bruin case that changed pretty fundamentally what we're allowed to do at the state level for concealed and open, for concealed carry weapons. Because we've had so few carry, publicly carried weapons for the last, I don't know, 40 years, we don't really have any rules about where you can and can't take them. So I think a bill having to do with close so-called sensitive places, whether you can take your concealed carry into a courtroom or into a school or onto a playground or the football stadium, if and when we build a new one, that sort of thing is gonna come up. The other topic, and Mr. Harris will be covering this in more detail, but I think the ethics slash campaign finance reform, there's gonna be issues that come up there that primarily go through judiciary as well. So my new counterpart, Representative Tarnas of the Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee in the House and I are going to be very busy this year. Thank you very much, Carl. One of the things that I do testify at judicial confirmation hearings, if I know whoever attorney is being nominated. And one thing, this is my personal comment. I always look at the qualifications of the person being nominated and I restrict my comments to that person's qualifications. And I just wanted to mention that because sometimes it goes off and I think that it's important to realize that the qualifications of the nominee, whether it's for the judiciary or a department is the focus of the confirmation hearing. So that's a good point. And I think it's worth commenting that, the fact that the Judicial Selection Commission will now be releasing the names of those who did not make the cut to be given to the governor and the names given to the governor will be public as well. I think there will be a level of second guessing that we didn't have before. I don't know how constructive that will be. People need to keep in mind that as the Judiciary Chair and as the Judiciary Committee and the whole Senate looks at it, we get quite a lot of information about the person who's actually nominated. We get to look at their JSC application and we can dig into them quite a bit and quite a bit of detail. We don't have that same information for the people that didn't get to the Senate. So you can always, I'm afraid or maybe not afraid is the right word. I think it's possible that certain groups will fight a particular nominee knowing that the person they really wanted was on the list and we're gonna try to kill this nominee and hopefully the governor will appoint our woman next time. It's really hard for me to judge which is the better candidate because I don't have the same level of information for both of them. So there does have to be some level of trust between the Senate and the governor as to whether they picked the best one from the pool available. Thank you very much, Senator. I feel the same way that if I want, when the nominees are announced, if I feel like one person or whoever on the list, I feel is the better person and I'd like to weigh in, then my position is to talk to the governor and or send a letter to the governor saying, I think this person on the list would make the best judge or department head or whoever. But thank you. I think let me check real quickly if there's any. Bob, I can take some of these procedural questions that have popped up, I can answer them quickly. Yeah, go ahead. So there is a question opening day is Wednesday, January 18th. If you can't be there in person, there will be, you can watch it on a LLLO and you can likely watch it on the YouTube channels for the House and the Senate respectively. How to communicate your legislative priorities? Yes, if you are with a group, send an email to our House leadership or our Senate leadership, but you can also directly contact chairs and committee members, simply send an email. That's a very good way to communicate your group's legislative priorities. Donald had a question about how do oral testimonies virtually be conducted for blind individuals or really any individuals who do not have access to computers or smartphones? That is a challenge. I don't know what the specific answer to that is. I do know that during the pandemic that public libraries had iPads available and that was part of the project. So Bob, on that question, I can follow up. That really is a question about access to computers and smartphones for anybody. That's a challenge. So that's why we also have the option to come down and do things in person as well. Finally, Susan asked a question about limits on the bill introduction for House members. I want to clarify again, it's 20 per individual representatives. It's another additional 10 for our morning committee chairs. These are the subject matter committee chairs and then an additional 15 for our afternoon committees which are the finance, CPC, judiciary, higher ed and education. So those are the limits for the House. I'm sure there's other questions but we can address those later. You know, one of the questions is this program being recorded? And we'll be viewed, yes it is. Think Tech is recording this and it will be shown later either on Think Tech or on YouTube. And in the past, we've talked to O'Lello to see whether they wanted to rebroadcast this as well. One other quick, oh, somebody had mentioned that a lot of when they testify virtually that there's no follow up questions. Whereas people with titles, so-called tells get the questions but I've seen people that have testified virtually after all the testimony is over depending on how the chair runs the committee, they were asked a question. So anyway, that's some of the questions that come up. Bob, something else to keep in mind. Members are often given the opportunity by the chairs to ask questions themselves. So members are looking for people in the audience. I would urge folks, if you're testifying virtually, if you think you might be questioned, you need to stay on. So that's another valuable reason why to be in person is that you might be called upon to ask the question. Finally, I did see a question in the chat line about attorney general. So to our government employees who are on this webinar, I understand that you might be pulled in many different directions. And as you know, like during the course of the legislative process, we winnow the bills down. So clearly, my preference is to have department heads, the leadership in the departments present when we're hearing bills. For the attorney generals, for the deputies, we understand that you're probably gonna be pulled in different directions. So be there when you can, obviously be there virtually if possible as well. And then as we progress through session, clearly the bills that are gonna become really the hot topic bills where you may need to be present, that's a judgment call on your part. And I would hope you wanna be the best resource to the legislators as possible. So being present is always important. You know, David Rogers asked whether on opening day, it will be encouraged to meet in greet chairs, leadership and new members. I assume legislators that that will be part of the opening day as usual. Even though in COVID it was shut down. So now that the capital is gonna be open, I think that people can go in and meet with different chairs and meet as many legislators as they would like with time permitting. Yes, there will be a return to kind of receptions and meet and greet, but I will also caution, you know, we are still in a triple pandemic. We have RSV flu, COVID still out there. So there is some hesitation on some parts. So not all offices may be doing receptions, but clearly we're all gonna be there and present. And our offices are open, you know, via email, contact, you know, phone, and we're eager to get started with the session. Yeah, Bob, I would just add that I think it's probably a good idea to bring a mask with you because the individual senators and representatives are sort of sovereign in their own offices and some of them may require like me a mask to come in, but we will be open and we will have food unlike the last couple of years. So just be aware. That'll be great. And by the way, I just to go back to testifying because I lobby at the legislature, I really missed having to be being able to go up to the session. And so like, even though I can do it virtually and it's easy, you know, I will probably go back to my old style and go up to the session almost daily and testify in person. This is Carl again, I think that's another one where you're just gonna have to read the chairs of the committees by ear because I personally am still quite cautious about it. We had 1500 new COVID cases last week and four deaths and it's blowing up in China. So I personally will not be discouraging people from going online and I do question people online. I mean, we've been doing it for two years. So it's not like we haven't had to do this, but yeah, there's still some caution there and we don't really know, unfortunately, like we have and like the situation has been this entire pandemic, we don't really know what's gonna happen next. Oh, good, good. You know, I had thought about it too because reading the national newspapers, you know, and looking at COVID that is increasing in different places. I mean, obviously if it, hopefully not, but if it starts to increase in Hawaii, I am sure there are gonna be changes made as to how the session will operate because it's just too dangerous and the safety is more important. Okay, Rep Balati, you have a few minutes to go over what you see will be issues in the health and homelessness committee. Well, this is a perfect segue, Bob, you know, we are gonna be still dealing with a lot of post-COVID issues. And so we're gonna have to look at how we're recovering. We're looking at work for shortage. That's gonna be a very big issue within the health committee and homelessness. Many of the projects that we actually initiated prior to the COVID pandemic, the Ohana zones, we're gonna be having to revisit those projects and see what worked and what didn't work. How are we gonna continue to address the homelessness issue? And as a piece of that, something that has emerged from our house policy committee is the real importance of the prioritization of mental health issues. Those were important before the pandemic, but I think they became exacerbated and highlighted. So we're very concerned about mental health issues in the broadest forms, things from preventing, you know, the childcare, child mental illnesses that we're seeing the mental health struggles that we see that they're having coming out of pandemic, but also looking and continuing to dig deep into the mental health issues that are affecting and impacting our criminal justice system. Senator Karl Rhodes and I have over the pandemic continue to work on a mental health task force that includes collaboration with the prosecutors, the public defendants, the judiciary. And so we're gonna be following up on some of those pilot programs where we were looking at mental health diversion versus direct incarceration, because we know that some of these people cycling in and out of homelessness are in fact touching the criminal justice system and then not getting the treatment they need and then just returning back to the streets where we see them, you know, sadly in their states of homelessness. Those are some of the broad issues, Bob that we're gonna be talking about. And of course, I know that people will also have their, you know, other issues that are really important. I know that the folks out there are talking about recreational cannabis. We're looking at reproductive health care issues that span from, you know, reproductive health, abortion care, all of the things that are part of that panoply of family planning services. So those are just some of the few issues that the House Health and Homelessness Committee will be dealing with. Okay, and anything on any, have you heard any kind of feedback by the administration or anybody as to what they may be doing with regard to homelessness? I think, you know, we've been hearing what, you know, Governor Green's support of Kahale. And so I hope that we're gonna have a strong conversation about that. What's really also great is that health and homelessness is paired with human services. So really addressing homelessness is about both the health and the human services issues. And so really looking at, you know, the housing first policies that we've been pursuing through the Kahales, through these Ohana zones where we've provided wraparound services and coordination with, you know, moving people, trying to find them transition housing, trying to find them temporary housing and then moving them towards, hopefully, more permanent housing. Okay, great. Thank you very much, Rapaloti. Well, let's now turn to Robert Harris, who is Vice Chair of the Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct. And the resolution was submitted in 2022 by Speaker Psyche, and the commission started its work in 2022. They came out with an interim report and several bills actually were submitted and several were passed and everything is on the website. And the CISC, which is the acronym, they came out with a final report. It's almost 400 pages, which includes drafts of recommended legislation that they are intending to submit. I thought that it was very important because all of these recommendations, I think will be submitted as legislation. So I thought it was important for the audience to hear from Robert Harris. Dan Foley, retired judge Foley, was supposed to be on the panel. He was on the brochure, but a conflict came up. So I really appreciate Robert Harris, who is the Executive Director of the State Ethics Commission to be on the panel. Robert, did you wanna mention the other members or did you want me to go through the other members on the commission? Happy to and thank you for the warm introduction. We had a really impressive body of folks that were involved on the commission, including, as you mentioned, retired judge Dan Foley. We also had a Kristen Izumi Naitao from the Campaign Spending Commission. We had representatives from the League of Women Voters. We had representative from Common Cause. We also had representative, again, apologies, I should actually pull up the actual list. Well, Barbara Montefarmer, a legislator was on it and Flores Nakakuni, who was a retired US Attorney for the District of Hawaii. And of course, Janet Mason was the League of Women Voters rep. Correct, thank you. And we also had Nico Slaverins from the Common Cause Hawaii. So it was a really impressive and diverse group of individuals, I think, representing different points of view. And we had some extensive conversations. And I think there was a lot of agreements that were reached over the time. And so I think it was a really great joint effort. Well, why don't you go through, Robert, some of the issues that the commission discussed and will probably submit legislation. And what is the so-called Citizens Bill of Rights which includes several interesting and potentially controversial issues that the legislators have to deal with? Sure, thank you. There are a total of 31 proposals. And so trying to go through each proposal is gonna be really time consuming. It's probably something that's worth doing and maybe at a later date, we can try to do a focus on some of those different ideas. But I think what we're trying to do here is really try to identify some of the key ones, particularly this audience might be interested in. So the Public Bill of Rights, there were a number of people who offer testimony to the Standards Commission. Flagging, I think concerns anyone's been involved with literature has probably heard before. Things like ability to see testimony had submitted. So if a bill is being heard and folks are referencing the testimony that others can't see it, don't understand necessarily where the statistics or facts are coming from. There were issues such as a notice of a hearing coming up sort of trying to make sure that there's an appropriate level of notice or enough time so that people can get engaged into it. And so the attempt to the Bill of Rights is to actually sort of establish standards around this, essentially saying that this is how we should handle this on a going forward basis. So for example, one of the things it says is it recommends that all testimony be available 24 hours after it is submitted. So the idea is that it's available for the public to see. There are other proposals specifically to deal with sort of common ways of addressing a bill. So for example, it recommends trying to avoid the triple referral that maybe perhaps unnecessary referrals trying to make sure that there's more time within sort of the substantive committees to really be able to focus on those bills. In addition, there's a recommendation that we start putting in specific amounts for programs rather than leaving those blank and try to avoid the practice of putting in defective dates. Again, the idea is the bill is good. It should be moving forward as in the best form possible rather than forcing things into a conference committee. So again, it's a pretty sweeping proposal with a lot of different ideas on there. And I think we're going to have some pretty healthy discussion around it. Robert, what about some of the specifics when I looked at the different issues that were raised in the citizens, so-called Bill of Rights, about trying to do away with the usage of defective dates. And for those in the audience, many times a committee chair or the committee will not have an effective date as to when that bill would be effective. And so they defect the date. So the bill will be effective on July 1, 2050, which we all know is not possible. And one of the reasons that I think the committee chairs do that, oftentimes when they finish discussing a bill, it is not in perfect shape as to what they want. Let's assume in the house. So they want to make sure when it crosses over to the Senate that there's going to be further discussion. So that's going to be, I think, Robert, a controversial issue. But what was some of the discussion around that particular suggestion? Sure, thanks for the question. Obviously, and not to rehash the entire circumstance, but I think many of us are aware that the Standards Commission came out of several corruption charges, including from a former representative and from a former senator. And one of the quotes that came out of some of those corruption charges included a quote specific that it's quote, easy to kill a bill. Answer the recognition that perhaps there is the power one individual legislature to try to get rid of a bill, a specific bill. And that is one of the concerns of round corruption is that that ease of power, ease of use. I think we're aware in addition that the legislature operates under sort of a reciprocity arrangement. There's definitely some level of, you know, you hear my bill, I'll hear your bill. Your bill will get passed if my guilt gets passed. And that's sort of a normal political pressure point that happens. I think the intent of trying to avoid defective dates is it really does sort of allow all bills to be delayed into the very end and allows for more sort of that reciprocity and the ability to kill bills to remain. The intent of trying to eliminate the defective date is to essentially say, hey, if the bill is good enough to get out and move forward, you should try to put it in the best form possible and move it forward in that light. Typically, if for example, the House approves a bill sent to the Senate, the Senate likes it, they should be able to adopt it right then and there and not necessarily have to force something to conference committee. I guess finally too, I think if people are familiar with a conference committee, the intent of it is to hash out differences, you know, is essentially differences between the House and Senate language. Maybe not necessarily supposed to be substantive differences, but essentially here's the final wording or language. Because that is such a fast-paced process, it tends to be more outside of the public view. And I think a lot of the criticism was too many bills do go to conference committee and that's where a lot of substantive negotiations happen. And I think the intent is try to pull some of that away from the conference committee and put it more sort of its original intent, which is sort of hammering out the final language versus making that a substantive negotiating area. You know, another issue that came up during the interim last year, and the bill passed to prohibit legislators from holding fundraisers during session, whether it's the regular session, special session, et cetera. I understand that the commission now would like to expand that to say that there can't be any, there can't even be any solicitation or acceptance during session. So if unsolicited, Robert, I know a particular legislator personally and I send a donation campaign contribution to that legislator, do they have to then return it if the bill passes? Yeah, sure. So just briefly, I think the intent was the perception that during the legislative session in particular, that there's a perception that perhaps leverage could be put on a legislator in exchange for campaign donations. So please support my bill and you'll get a campaign donation and sort of the perception of that, even if it doesn't actually happen and maybe an appearance, that is sort of what goes on. So I think the intent was to try to create a freeze period during session and essentially allow the normal campaign contribution process to occur before and after, but try to say during session when some of these bills are being cited, let's sort of create a holding pattern. The challenge with fundraising is, fundraising is a specific, divine regulatory process where essentially you're going to say, hey, I'm sort of hosting an event, allowing people to come in and it's publicly noticed, people are aware of it. So even if that's taken off, which has currently happened in a law, legislators can still meet individually one-on-one and still ask for donations and get donations and that sort of has less public notice. So I think the additional step of saying we would like to try to create a holding pattern or freeze during the legislative session is also on the solicitation and acceptance. And so yes, Bob answering question specifically, the intent of this bill were to pass is if someone submitted a donation during the legislative session, the legislator would have to send it back and presumably it sent a very nice letter saying, thank you very much. And after this freeze period, I'd love to accept your donation, but right now I can't take it and I think that's the intent of it. You know, are there any suggestions by the commission on restrictions on the use of campaign funds? I thought I read something in the report that would limit what a legislator can do with the campaign funds other than during the campaign. Sure, so one of the proposals that came out was reducing or eliminating the ability for a legislator to buy tickets to another legislator's fundraising event. So the perception being that certain legislators who maybe have accumulated more campaign funds can kind of use that to help support or sort of show favoritism to certain candidates and sort of direct money that way. So I think the intent is sort of remove that appearance that certain incumbents are able to show favor or sort of use that as a means to get more power within the legislative body and sort of try to say, hey, that's on appropriate use of campaign funds. There was also proposals submitted by some of the members that would have more broadly restricted the use of campaign funds and said just essentially you can only use it for campaigns that wasn't as widely supported within the Senate's commission. So I think the specific proposal now is just looking at the purchase of two tickets. You know what, if you could spend a few minutes that we have for this segment on, I know there were some suggestions pertaining to the campaign spending commission as well as for lobbying and lobbyists if you wanna expand on that a little, Robert. Sure, well, let's just stay in on the campaign spending commission briefly. Just we're already kind of warm on that topic. There is a proposal to expand the publicly finance elections, which is one that we spent a lot of time talking about. And we heard proposals from other states or what other states are doing. And I think really the perception is this is how to maybe try to reduce some of the influence of outside forces and sort of maybe try to reduce the impact of Sidistina United generally on elections. So the proposal is to expand the amount of money that'd be available to candidates, but also it correspondingly would ask the legislature to help fund and eventually help create hopefully a permanent funding mechanism for publicly financed elections. I should caution it's partial publicly funded elections. In addition, there's a proposal that came out which is on pay to play, trying to more specifically reduce the ability of someone who has a contract with the state of Hawaii currently is not allowed to give campaign contributions, but it's the entity. So the attempt is to try to expand that to also officers and directors from that entity to prevent them from also giving campaign contributions. Relatedly, there's also a similar proposal around grants and aid that entities are doing grants and aid. Also similarly should necessarily be making campaign contributions. Why don't I go ahead and switch gears just briefly and I'm gonna get into the lobbying which I think some of the audience might be interested in. Currently our lobbying laws really archists notice. So the idea is we don't really say there's any good lobbying or bad lobbying but essentially we just want public disclosure if someone's being paid to lobby that they have a obligation to disclose that they're lobbying. So one of the proposals is to ask them to identify the bill or matter they're lobbying on with more specific description. Right now they just sort of have to say I lobbying on a subject area. So the idea is actually trying to specifically enumerate, hey, I'm lobbying on this bill and this bill and this bill and trying to make that a little bit more specific for public disclosure purposes. Another idea is to, or another bill proposal is to require lobbyists to go through training as a condition of their registration every two years. And so that way we can really make sure they stay abreast of what is sometimes can be a fast evolving area and try to make sure we don't have any hiccups later where they didn't know of something and unintentionally make a mistake. Finally, there are restrictions on state employees and legislators on accepting gifts. However, there's no restrictions on lobbyists from giving gifts correspondingly. So the intent is to try to make it equal, essentially say, not only can state legislators not take it but also lobbyists can't give it and try to make sure that there's uniformity there. That's one of the other proposals. Was a lot Bob, is there any follow up questions you have on those? No, no, well, I mean, they only, I put my lobbyist hat on now. I mean, if you have one or two clients that you represent at the state legislature, maybe it's doable to do the reporting like is being suggested. However, if you have 10, 12 clients that you represent, not that everybody has an issue at that time. In other words, there's no legislation you have to pass or oppose. But if you do, then the reporting becomes a little onerous, and I think that's a problem because for one client, I mean, in the past, I may have been tracking and testifying on 10 bills and then to report every single discussion that I've had or whatever, it's really kind of impossible to do the report that way. But I'm not saying that's not good or bad, but it's a problem. Yeah, so let me follow up on that because I think we do want to be sensitive to the stakeholders can be impacted by this. The intent would not be to be required to disclose any conversation or discussion. Again, as normal, you're just essentially reporting the amount of money spent or expended, right? So that's no different. We've also asked this bill not go in effect for one year to give us time to update the filing system with the idea that right now you toggle a button, say, I testified, say, on an environmental matter. That's all you time. We would try to replace it with essentially a check-down box or a drop-down box of some of the different bills. So you're essentially checking the boxes. And yes, it's gonna be more work to do that, right? If you're tracking or you're actively lobbying on, say, 30 bills, that's 30 bills you have to make sure you're check-marking and that is more of an effort. But I think the intent from a public disclosure perspective to just say, hey, I spent 20 hours in an environmental area, isn't necessarily too descriptive from a public point of view. I think the intent is to say, no, hey, here's the bills I was really working on is probably more sort of in fulfillment of what the policy is here. Okay, thanks a lot, Robert. By the way, there are several questions that were directed to you in the Q&A box. If you could take a look at that and maybe we can handle that as we close up. I'd like to now turn to the budget and physical issues, I think, which are very important and a lot of the audience probably would like to know what may happen. And again, I wanna thank Senator Keith Agaran and Representative Kitagawa because they're taking leave from their hearings right now to participate and tell you what the budget and physical situation is. And so I'd like to start off with Senator Agaran about the budget concerns and what about the money committee's view on inflation and the estimate of future revenues. So I'll turn it to Senator Agaran. Yeah, thanks, Bob. As you know, the new governor has submitted a budget to the legislature, but that budget was really worked on by the outgoing administration. And what that budget reflects really is, I guess you can call it a status quo budget for the most part. The major adjustments in that budget, if you look at on budget and budget finances website, the budget and brief has a good description of what's in that budget right now. Mainly some adjustments for fixed costs like Medicaid, pensions and benefits and those kinds of things. And then on the fringes of each department, so some minor changes, I think a lot of the department's requests are things that were held out that are now being reviewed by the new administration, which remember has only been in office since December 3rd. So this gives the new budget and finance director as well as all the rest of the departments a chance to review those requests. And we would expect that after the governor state of the state address on the Monday following opening day, that we'll be seeing exactly what it is that the governor really wants on budget. And it's one of the challenges for both the finance and the Ways and Means Committee because we're working on the budgets right now. Even though the Senate will get the budgets after finance sends us a house draft, we already are working on our own draft and we're also reviewing the projections that are being made by the council and revenues which met yesterday and we're meeting again in March before we finish the Senate draft. The council and revenues yesterday made one adjustment which was really to reduce the projection for this year from 6.5% to 5.5. And that's really to reflect the fact that there was a major change in the general fund because of the tax rebates that were given to most residents in the past year. But they also adjusted upward the projection for next fiscal year from 4% to 5% and basically it's a wash. The projections going out are what was projected back in September. So we're looking at for this coming fiscal year about $10.35, $395 billion in general fund revenues. So in that sense, the projections right now that we're all I think both finance and WHAM are working with are at status quo. What the governor is proposing currently is an $18 billion budget in the first year and 17.86 billion in the second year and which is about an increase of about 4% in the first year and 3% in the second year. On the general fund side, in the first year, the governor's proposal is an increase of about $660 million in the second year, $472 million. On the CIP portion of the budget which is what I really concentrate on, the governor is proposing a $2.1 billion CIP budget in the first year and a $1.4 billion budget in the second year. The interesting thing about the proposal is that of the CIP projects, about 462 million is proposed for geobonds in the first year and 358 in the second year. Which is actually sounds like a smaller number than usual, but they're also proposing $324 million of CIP with general funds in the first year and 295 million in the second year. We did fund a large portion of CIP in the last budget with general funds. So it'll be interesting to see how that pans out to see whether or not the departments are able to get those projects out because there is a little bit of a shorter period of time to spend that money, the general funds that were appropriated last year. The other thing that I think the council on revenues as well as I think you a hero and the state economists are a little bit concerned about is of course they're watching the expected recession on the mainland. And they right now, they'll expect that the recession will not be as hard on Hawaii, mainly because they still see a lot of construction coming in mainly funded by the federal government that will benefit Hawaii as well as they expect that we will start to see a return of the Japanese visitors because currently our visitor industry is doing much better than expected. And that has been without a major component of the industry, which is Japanese visitors. And so in that sense, they think that we will not be hurt by, well, I don't mean by not hurt, but the impact of the recession might be lessened in Hawaii. That being said, I think that people should remember that part of the reason our numbers look so good is probably due to inflation. The inflation on prices and inflation also means that probably some of the collections are a little bit larger based on the fact that we are in an inflationary state at the moment. As the president said, the outset of this, one thing that people have been focused on is all the talk about a $2 billion surplus currently. And I think the governor, I think we'll be looking closely what the governor poses in his changes and what he identifies as his priorities in the state of the state. But as the Senate president said, I think we're a little bit more focused in the Senate on looking at one-time investments, things that will, just because we're cautious about whether or not this kind of revenue can be sustained over the long haul. So new programs will get a lot of screening. And so what we're looking at is probably looking at filling in holes and looking at how best to follow through on the things that were proposed in recent budgets. Thank you very much, Senator. I'm Bob, I just wanted to mention one thing though. Sure. While we did not have a lot of new members, most of the committees have been reconstituted. And so if you look at the morning committees, consumer protection, judiciary, and ways and means, there are some new members on each of those committees. So people that are probably are not as familiar or haven't been working on those types of issues in the last couple of sessions. I would also note that Ways and Means has 13 members this year. So we fully have more than enough to reorganize the Senate if we wanted to because we have a majority. Good, thank you. That's a good segue because when I asked representative Lisa Kedugawa to be on the panel, I think most of you know that representative Yamashita, Kaya Yamashita from Maui is the new House Finance Chair and Lisa Kedugawa is the Vice Chair. And I mentioned to Lisa that the House Finance has been chaired for so many years from now Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke that whether we can expect any differences and as Senator Agaran said, that there are a lot of new members on House Finance. And so I'll turn it over to Kedugawa to mention how any, will there be any changes in how they're gonna conduct hearings? What about the new members? I assume they had some introductory internal discussions. And so go ahead Lisa. Thanks Bob. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for the question. So yes, Chair Yamashita and I are both new to the committee. But you know the role of the Finance Committee and its jurisdictions are spelled out in our House rules. So we're really not expecting any drastic changes to the way Finance is run. Our processes and our hearings will always be in line with the Constitution and the whole e-revise statutes as well as our House rules. So it's unlikely that much will change. Our leadership is still working on our House rules right now so we'll know a little bit more and it'll get adopted by resolution on opening day. But I encourage everyone as we've all mentioned throughout this panel that we really want people to participate in the legislative process and to submit your testimony and to come in person or on Zoom. And we just really wanna make sure that your voice is heard. So the Finance Committee will continue to welcome your testimony and your input throughout the legislative process. And as we've talked about, you know, a lot we have a lot of new members in the House. So there will be a total of 18 new members on finance. There are 16 members, 10 of those members will be first year freshmen. And so we have begun some training and information and we're actually going through informational briefings right now where departments are coming in and sharing information about their organizations as well as their budget requests. And so there will definitely be a steep learning curve for many of us on finance. But you know, I think this is a really great opportunity for everyone to just learn a lot about state government and just where the concerns are, where the strengths are and where areas might be that we need to focus on during this legislative session. You know, Lisa, I assume that, you know, everything is new. And what Senator Agaran said that I assume the House finance initially, you know is looking at the same issues that the Senate is besides the ways it means is on the budget and inflation and future revenues. I assume that you and Kyle and others have had discussion about that as well. Yes, yeah. And I think we've, you know everyone else earlier has really kind of highlighted some of the areas that we're going to be looking at and working on whether it's housing or homelessness or Della mentioned mental health issues. And so these are areas that we're going to be working with the Senate on for sure and continuing to work with our colleagues on because these are really issues that are pressing in the community and things that we have heard from a lot of community members as things that need to be addressed hopefully this legislative session. You know, there's a question I'll just answer that about whether a budget and finance and important to understand the relationship between the Council of Revenues, Finance Committee and Ways and Means. Can there be a webinar for the public to help the public understand at a layman's level? That's a very interesting question. That's something that could be discussed with ThinkTech and maybe in the future. Even though I've been lobbying for many years the first time I had to deal with appropriation for a client that had to deal with Ways and Means and finance I had to learn how the budget process worked, et cetera and I know that to many people including lobbyists it's a mystery, you know? So that's a good question. Maybe a little bit of a history to answer that question. The reason we have a Council on Revenues really is because in the battle days everyone had their own projections on what state revenues would be like. So the governor had his projection, Ways and Means had their own projection, Finance had their own projection, Tax Department had their own projections and people in the community had their own projections. So the idea was to have one body that would have a common projection that the governor as well as the two money committees would all have to rely on and base their budgets on. It's not a static committee. I mean, they meet quarterly and so the projections can go up and down. You know, they had met in September and they met yesterday and they did react to some adjustments that the tax department brought to their attention. So the reason we have the Council on Revenues to make sure that, you know, you don't have Ways and Means saying, well, we don't think it'll be 10.4 million. We really think it's gonna be 12 million. So we're gonna appropriate a budget of 11 million when we will still have a surplus of a million or a billion. And that's one of the main functions of why we have a Council on Revenues is to have a common place to talk about how much revenue we can actually work with. Oh, thanks, Senator. You know, I had a question when you were mentioning CIP which is Capital Improvement Projects. Do you think that the money committees or the legislature, I shouldn't say the money committees, will be focusing on repairing maintenance of state buildings and schools at all? What has this gone on? We need to. And one of the limits that we've had in the past is really when we were so dependent on general obligation bonds, that is limited on the types of projects you can spend your bonds on because technically you really want the improvement to be a little bit aligned with the time to repay the bonds, the debt service. So I think with CASHCIP, I think we have a little bit of more leeway, assuming you can meet the time deadlines to get the project out. To do the things that need to be done, if you need to replace furniture, if you need to replace carpet, things that don't have a life of a 20 or 30 year jail bond. And I think one of the things we've seen at all the schools is there was no follow-up on funding in part because it didn't align with the length of time in need for a jail bond project. But obviously those are the bulk of the requests that we're going to get from the university and DOE as well as the DAGs on RNM projects. Good. Thank you, Senator. We have a little less than five minutes left. There are a lot of questions. And I think it's not possible to answer all the questions, but Think Tech keeps a list of all the questions. I get them. And we will try to answer as many of them as possible after we put out a memo of some sort to answer some of the questions. For the audience, as the public at large, one of the reasons that I wanted to have the commission to improve standards of conduct and Robert Harrison is that they are going to submit legislation. Because of all the media coverage of the concerns with corruption, et cetera, I thought it was important for the public to understand what the commission did and some of the recommendations. So do any of the legislators have any kind of final comments? And then I will close out the session. Yeah, Bob, I just want to make one clarification what Carl mentioned on the process. Even though hearings for a second committee in the center are usually decision-making, that doesn't mean that we make the decision in a vacuum. Usually the committees will be reviewing the testimony that was submitted both in the subject matter committee and any written testimony that's being submitted in judiciary, consumer protection, and ways and means. And I think our staff takes a very close look at the testimony. And that's why you still see a lot of amendments during decision-making. And it's all usually based on the written testimony. And again, I think you had a... And if you can't get the written testimony and you still have the usual options of contacting members of the committee to let them know what your concern is. And sometimes that gets worked into decisions as well. Yeah, just to summarize, historically in the Senate, after the substantive committee has heard a bill and it gets referred to ways and means, they basically don't have a full-blown hearing but have decision-making. But as Senator Algarron said, that doesn't mean they just say, oh, well, we're just going to do pass it out or kill it. They look at the money implications in that particular bill and make certain decisions. And in the House, traditionally, the Finance Committee when Representative... Now, Lieutenant Governor Luke was running the committee and even before that, they had full-blown hearings, even though the substantive committee has had hearings before that, but they focused also on the fiscal and the money issues. Okay, we're at the end. It's almost 10.30. I'd like to thank all of those that have logged on to this webinar. And we're going to upload a evaluation. And if you could fill that out, it would be very helpful to me and to Pacific Law Institute, as well as the legislators who have participated. And we're thinking about doing a follow-up in March to see what bills are still alive and have a panel discussion on those to give you an idea of what potentially could pass in May. So please fill that out. I'd like to thank Jay Feidel and the staff at ThinkTech and of course all of the legislators, Senate presidents, House Speaker Psyche, Senator Carl Rhodes and Senator Gil Keith-Agaran and Representative Della Obalotti and Representative Lisa Kitagawa. And of course, Robert Harris for participating and taking the time. And thank you all for participating. I hope it has been helpful.