Senate committee amends and advances bill to transfer some school-site library parcels to Hawaii State Public Library System

The Senate committee on Education, sitting jointly with the Committee on Water, Land, Culture and the Arts, amended and advanced SB 2613 on Feb. 13 to clarify how public and school library properties are conveyed from the Department of Education to the Hawaii State Public Library System (HSPLS).

Stacy Aldridge, representing the Hawaii State Public Library System, told the committee the system has operated separately from the DOE for decades but never completed formal property transfers. Aldridge said unclear title and lack of site control have delayed construction and capital projects; she cited the Kahului Library project as an example that required a right-of-entry and a memorandum of agreement with DOE, delaying a planned new site several months.

Keith Hayashi of the Department of Education said the bill is part of the governor’s package and framed it as a cleanup to Act 307 (Session Laws of Hawaii 2022). DOE asked for a technical amendment to remove one parcel — TMK 4-3-6002:010 (Wilcox Elementary tennis courts) — from the transfer list so the county can assume control of that property.

Committee members pressed DOE on whether transfers require approval from the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR). DOE representatives and counsel said past transfers have generally been interpreted as occurring "by operation of law" and that BLNR typically does not issue separate transactional deeds for those transfers; the department asked the legislature to provide clearer statutory language to avoid future transactional confusion with third parties.

The committee adopted an amendment to SB 2613 clarifying the statutory requirement for transfers of lands where public and school libraries sit and approved moving 12 library properties to HSPLS while incorporating DOE’s technical requests. The committee recorded affirmative votes from the chair, vice chair and other members and reported the measure out of committee with amendments.

Next steps: SB 2613 advances with amendments that aim to align property control with operational responsibilities for library facilities. The DOE and HSPLS said they will continue to work on technical details to ensure transfers do not disrupt active capital projects.