2016-04-12 Regular Session Minutes

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Ms. Yamauchi: Yes. Mr. Robinson: What does that mean? Ms. Yamauchi: Our community partners I mean we put it out to all of the advocates on our...in our database which is over two thousand people so it is open, but a lot of the people who attend are really our stakeholders. We do provide neighbor island scholarships, usually for one to two community folks to attend in addition to any of the awardees who happen to be from neighbor islands. I think in 2014 aside from Council member Kanuha, we also had a youth who was honored from Maui and her and her mother came to the event. Mr. Robinson: May I continue? I noticed there's the discussion about the fact that you folks were operating as a...not registered as a lobbyist and you eventually became registered as a lobbyist. Ms. Yamauchi: Correct. Mr. Robinson: What influenced you to become registered as a lobbyist? Ms. Yamauchi: Well for us a majority of our work has been at the statewide level where we have always been registered. We were not aware that every County had a separate set of issues and registration process. And so in 2014, we did become aware and we were closed to hitting the threshold when I was going to fly over to testify. We have local island staff here so it's usually not a cost for us. The same type of cost at least, but when I was going to need to fly over specifically to testify we made sure we did register. Mr. Robinson: What is that threshold that you discussed? Ms. Yamauchi: Well we were looking at what the threshold is that the County limits are. Five hours and two hundred seventy- five dollars I believe. Mr. Robinson: Right. Okay, but you've raised it with other islands and also at the State level as well. Ms. Yamauchi; We now are except I guess Kauai does not have any...there's pending legislation to have lobbying 20