House Committee on Consumer Protection and Commerce (CPC) - chair: Hiraki, vice chair: Schatz

Saturday, January 1, 2005,

Testifier: Jean Aoki, Legislative Chair, LWV-Hawaii

Click here to view HB660, HB 636

The League of Women Voters of Hawaii supports both HB 660 and HB636, but prefer HB 636. Since apparently both bills are talking about the same excess money in the Compliance Resolution Fund, unless we’re talking about a huge amount that could accommodate both options for the use of that money, we would prefer to see it provide the opportunity for access to the services of the public access stations to people living in remote areas who are now underserved. People in some of these rural areas have less opportunity to “get connected” with the rest of the people in the county or the state, and have less venues for expressing their opinions to a large audience. We need to take the “soap box” to them and provide them with the means of communication with the rest of the county and the state. Especially for access stations on our neighbor islands which are not able to benefit from the economies of scale that ‘Olelo enjoys, we think the additional money would be a real boon in serving all of the people of the respective counties. Thank you for this opportunity to testify on these bills.