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President's Message (Astrid Monson)
Annual Meeting '96
Excerpts from "The 1996 Legislature" (Ah Quon McElrath)
Consensus on Con Con (Jean Aoki)
Human Resources (Suzanne Meisenzahl)
State Legislative Report (Jean Aoki & Arlene Ellis)
Can Honolulu League Survive?
New Guide to Services Published by ASK-2000
Voice of Our Own
Welcome
Well Wishes from Hawaii
Voter Article Deadline
National Convention

State Legislative Report

Even as we mourn the failures of this legislative session and take some comfort in the demise of certain bills and the saving of a few programs. your State legislative team is looking forward to the new year with a greater understanding of how we may more effectively participate in the legislative process to advance League's objectives and positions.

We are going to have to be more proactive and form a legislative program, and either by ourselves and/or in coalition with others have certain bills introduced in the next session. We will need to go over the bills introduced more carefully and lobby committees to hear the bills we think merit consideration. This year, some very important ethics bills never made it out of committees.

The whole legislative team – this past year it was the two legislative co-chairs and the chairs of certain committees who did their own lobbying – will need to meet periodically to coordinate their work, develop strategy, and support each other.

We will need to schedule our other League responsibilities to leave more time to devote to the legislative proceedings so that we know the status of the bills we are following at any given point, and when additional help is needed in the way of letters and phone calls from our membership and other groups, have a system set up to rally the troops. We will need to do some active lobbying of legislators as well as testifying at hearings. A rally or two might have helped stop the erosion of the "sunshine" statute, for example.

Besides pushing our legislative agenda, League has the responsibility of monitoring the legislative process itself. If there are people who have the time to spend monitoring hearing and House and Senate sessions, or watching the cablecasts of selected legislative proceedings to analyze the process, you would be performing a great public service.

We need to develop the kind of expertise that former League President Evelyn Bender has, so that we can maneuver more effectively through the legislative maize. with a few sessions under our belt, we are now more prepared to develop those skills.

Jean Aoki
Arlene Kim Ellis
Co-Chairs

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