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

Wednesday, February 1, 2006, Conference Room 325

Testifier: Jean Aoki

Click here to view HB2738

The League of Women Voters of Hawaii strongly supports HB 2738 which would provide additional funding to support PEG access stations on Molokai, Lanai, and Hana, Maui. People in these rural areas have less opportunity to “get connected” with the rest of the people in the county and 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 another means of communicating with the rest of the county and the state. In fact, we don’t believe that even the access stations on the major islands of Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii t offer the same benefits as does ‘Olelo on Oahu just because ‘Olelo benefits from the economies of scale which the large population paying cable fees on Oahu makes possible. But, especially for these isolated communities, if the funds from the compliance resolution fund can be used to improve access to this particular means of communication, we should not hesitate a moment to provide them with the opportunity. Thank you for this opportunity to testify on these bills.