Legislature’s resolutions
wide-rangingHawaii lawmakers' 60-day annual
session features an eclectic array
of subjects
From a democracy advocate jailed in China and buffalo being slaughtered for meat in Yellowstone to making a special day for sea turtles and having Hawaii students make robots, the things Hawaii lawmakers fret about are as wide-ranging as life itself.
While the real substance of the Legislature's 60-day annual session is handled with bills -- budgets, pay raises, red-light cameras, drug abuse and gas prices -- legislators use resolutions to collectively voice their concern about matters at home and afar.
For instance, the House has a resolution "to prohibit the possession, propagation, sale, transfer or harboring of nonhuman primates in Hawaii, with certain exceptions," because "most owners of nonhuman primates lack the knowledge, skill and devotion necessary to prevent zoonosis, or the transmission of disease from primates to humans."
Let's hear a cheer for Hawaii's 13,000 hard-working janitors, according to another House resolution that would make this May 7 "Cleaners' Appreciation Day in the state of Hawaii."
"These individuals carry out a number of arduous tasks and perform duties such as facilities maintenance and cleaning and custodial services," it says.
On the international scene, a House resolution calls on the People's Republic of China to "immediately and unconditionally to release Rebiya Kadeer," a Muslim businesswoman and mother of 10 who was sentenced to eight years in prison after being arrested in 1999 for violating national security after she sent Chinese newspapers to her husband.
The House and Senate both have resolutions asking the governor to initiate sister-state relations with Rabat-Sale- Zemmour-Zaer in the Kingdom of Morocco. It would be Hawaii's 13th sister state.
Just why seems to be a stretch, but the resolution notes that at the 2003 International Youth Congress in Rabat-Sale-Zemmour-Zaer, "His Majesty King Mohammed VI and his prime minister, His Excellency Mr. Driss Jettou ... graciously" hosted Hawaii's representative.
It also notes that Driss Semlani, a teacher from El Malek Assaadi High School in Kenitra, Morocco, spent a semester in Hawaii in 2002 as part of a teacher exchange program; that Atiqa Hachimi, a Moroccan doctoral candidate in linguistics at the University of Hawaii, has worked to expand the Arabic language program at UH; and that Jan Rumi, who attended the World Youth Congress, is due to be confirmed as Morocco's counsel in Honolulu.
Closer to home is the plight of the endangered sea turtles whose survival is threatened by loss of habitat, plastic debris, fishing nets, pollution, disease, poaching and getting eaten.
To raise the public awareness of that plight, a House resolution calls for the governor to join the Humane Society of the United States and the Hawaii-based World Turtle Trust in declaring this May 23 "World Turtle Day."
It is not part of the Legislature's education reform package, but a Senate resolution looks to challenge the imagination of young people by promoting expansion of robotics education.
Then there are all those buffalo in Yellowstone, "the only wild, free-roaming American buffalo to occupy their native habitat in the United States," who "face threats of hazing, capture and slaughter" when they migrate out of the park during winter, according to a House resolution.
It says federal agencies have ordered the shooting of the buffalo because of the alleged threat that the brucellosis disease would be transmitted to cattle grazing on the adjacent public lands, even though no such cases have been confirmed.