This alert arrived via Henry Curtis of Life of the Land. Henry calls attention to hearing scheduled for tomorrow
HB2874 originally had a triple referral, but missed the deadline when neither the committee on economic development and business, or consumer protection and commerce, set it for a public hearing. But on February 16, it was re-referred as a single referral to the House Finance committee, and on Friday night it was scheduled for a hearing tomorrow.
This means the bill has not been vetted by any substantive committee, so its issues and problems have not been aired. It deserves to be killed on that basis alone.
Here’s Henry’s alert:
We again must ask for your support.
Late Friday night, a hearing was scheduled for 10am this Monday morning for HB2874. This is a House bill that seeks to permanently cap funding for all community access centers at current levels. Again, ‘Olelo and our PEG Access sister organizations are united in strong opposition to this bill since it will make it impossible for any of Hawaii’s PEG Access centers to maintain current service levels after this year.
On the surface, the bill will create a broadband special fund to support public school broadband and laptop initiatives. However, in order to implement this initiative, the bill will take funding intended to support the community’s voice via PEG Access by freezing appropriations of PEG funds derived from cable fees at 2011 levels and divert them to the State’s “Broadband Special Fund”. In 2017, any PEG Access funds remaining will revert to the General Fund.
‘Olelo is supportive of broadband initiatives for public schools. In fact, ‘Olelo has had a long and fruitful partnership with the educational sector promoting innovative media. However, ‘Olelo’s purpose is to serve and protect Access for all sectors and all voices. Capping PEG funding at 2011 levels will effectively take future funds that are meant to support all PEG Access sectors and community free speech to support a State initiative.
We understand this is very late notice, but we would appreciate your testimony and attendance at the Hearing on Monday. It is very important that our legislators hear your perspective on this issue. If you are unable to attend, information and links on submitting testimony and telephoning is below.
Monday, February 27, 2012; 10:00 A.M. Conference Room 308
To submit testimony
1) go to this site: http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/submittestimony.aspx
2) Type in “HB2874” in the box under “enter a measure” and click on “submit”3) The date, time, etc. for the hearing will appear in green
4) Then enter your personal information, click on “individual” and click “oppose”
5) Then scroll down to the “additional comments” box, add your personal comments/
sentences into the box (OR write up your comments and save as a document, use the “browser” box, and it will upload for you).
6) Then click the little “I agree to terms” box at the bottom, and hit “SUBMIT”
It will automatically be sent to the Chair of the Committee.
Mahalo!
Henry
Henry Curtis
Executive Director
Life of the Land
76 N. King Street, Suite 203
Honolulu, HI 96817
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HB2874 originally had a tripe referral, but missed the deadline …
A tripe referral? I think that’s offal, don’t you?
Tripe?
Damn you, Auto Correct!!
My auto correct wants to make “Cayetano” into “Kittens”…Microsoft sucks.
as O’ahu’s representative on the Cable Advisory Committee at the meeting where Sonobe pointed out the reality of the minimal public funds vs. the INET benefits, one would hope you’d have a little more to say about the issue other than politicians are confused for pussy cats (rather than the wolves in sheep’s’ clothing they are). 😉
Hey, they didn’t listen to me then and they’re sure as hell not going to listen now. The foxes are in charge of the chicken coop…let the slaughter begin!
The House continues to show a remarkable disregard for the public interest. Scheduleing Bills for Monday morning hearings but only posting them late on a Friday night. A number of important Bills (bad bills mostly) are set to be heard tomorrow morning but yet when people left work on Friday afternoon at 5ish – they had no clue. If they happened to be checking email over the weekend they might catch it but this is not people friendly by a long shot. How does official testimony get submitted 24 hours in advance when you only find out about the hearing when you log into your work computer n Monday morning? This is not the only “rereferral” that the Speaker and Finance Chair have taken liberty with either. They use the tools of their trade to bypass the process and thumb their nose at the public.
Feature, not bug.
This isn’t true of all chairs so it’s important to be clear who you mean. I notice some chairs post notices well in advance of the 48 hour rule and never play the “late in Friday night” posting.
It’s not the “House”; it’s the leadership. There’s a difference.
A chair of a committee normally scheduled to meet on Monday doesn’t have as much opportunity for greater-than-minimal notice as would a chair of a committee scheduled to meet on another day of the week. You can’t agendize an item before it actually is advanced to your committee. Actually, you could, but then you end up putting out all sorts of amended agenda that further confuse people.
So, are there chairs that do this because they can? Of course. But sometimes it really can’t be avoided.
In this particular case, I don’t know the details.
When I was the director of the State Ethics Commission, I had to check hearing notices from home late on Friday nights (as well as late every other night during the legislative session) as a ritual and during the weekend for 24 legislative sessions. If a bill was scheduled Friday night early for Tuesday (which usually was the case of late), I wrote the testimony over the weekend so it could be typed in time early on Monday to meet the 24-hour submittal deadline. No testimony was ever late, nor did I miss any hearings on bills of interest to the State Ethics Commission for these 24 years. If testimony was due by Monday, I wrote and submitted it over the weekend. I let staff have the weekend off, and no one objected. I was amazed how many bills were scheduled around 9 p.m. or later on Friday nights, usually for Tuesday hearings. This was the work required if one actually was interested in the mission of one’s agency. It is difficult not to assume that all of this late scheduling (and worse) arises from a legislative lack of interest in views from the “no-count” public and “no-count” state officials. Once is a real blue moon someone from the Ledge might call me about a hearing coming up, but that was extraordinarily rare–once or twice in 24 years? This leads one to wonder whether lobbyists, etc., and those who “count” are given the courtesy of a heads-up. Before hearing notices were put on-line to a trustworthy degree–really around the early 2000’s?, I went to the Ledge in the morning before work and after work to check for hearing notices, and drove there once during the weekend to check for hearing notices. Seems like it is time to demand that a democracy function like one. For people like me who were generally the disfavored, I knew enough to get my views in as testimony, and bothered to appear despite the slings and arrows. Those who do not understand the system, and there is no reason to expect they should, don’t even know what they don’t know.
I still say the best solution is to split PEG funds. Otherwise these stealth raids will continue until there is nothing left for P.
The “P” of PEG is for Free Speech purposes (not “E” & “G”). Note in ‘Olelo’s proposal there is nothing about ‘Olelo promising to protect 1st amendment rights 🙁
As it is now, “E” gets 25% of the funds, and according to the recent management audit, ‘Olelo spends more resources on “E”, even after the 25% allotment, than it does for “P”.
These newly acquired funds through this legislation are to be used for the keiki (cute factor) for broadband (INET). Read the minutes of the January 2007 Cable Advisory Committee and you will see that the value of the benefits for the INET already derived from the cable franchise far exceed the value of the franchise fees: “Mr. Sonobe stated that if the FCC order applied
to the State, it would have significant impact on the INET since the INET
benefits received from cable operators total far more than the 5% of gross revenue, more like 10 times this amount.”
http://hawaii.gov/dcca/catv/cable_advisory_committee/cac_minutes_jan_10_07.pdf
Henry’s alert is a verbatim copy of ‘Olelo’s. Too bad none of the sheople ever check the facts. 🙁
If you make yourself sheep, the wolves will eat you.
Benjamin Franklin
I beg to differ Charles. The “House” is responsible for “leadership”. It is too easy for the individual members to slough off their responsibility of holding leadership accountable. Blame it on leadership, blame it on the speaker, blame it on Marcus – each member is responsible for the travesty that passes for leadership in the House.
You know more about the legislature than I do but I don’t think individual members can schedule a hearing.
What you’re saying is that if a chair pulls a fast one and schedules a hearing late Friday for Monday morning, every member is equally responsible for that.
That’s like saying each citizen is equally responsible for decisions made by the president. I actually think the president is more responsible that I am for decisions he makes.
has anyone wondered why they continually go after the PEG funds, and not the franchise fees that go to PBS Hawai’i? Perhaps you should ask ex-DCCA director, now president of PBS Hawaii Robbie Alm? Or his board appointee to ‘Olelo’s 1st Board of Directors Neil Abercrombie?
Neil Abercrombie? Hahaha! He appointed a banker Roy Anemiya from Central Pacific Bank to head Olelo.
Hawai’i is the only state in the U.S. that allocates CABLE fees to a BROADCAST Corporation.
This is politicians’ excuse to shut down those damn noisy volunteers at Olelo.
Political cronies do not want push back and expose from the grassroots.
Send a few spitballs their way.
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/submittestimony.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=2874