Strong quarantine enforcement is a critical part in the overall attempt to protect Hawai`i’s endemic species. Passage of Senate Bill 2382, then, has to be ranked as a major accomplishment of the 1990 legislative session. Most of the bill was taken from an administration (Department of Agriculture) measure. Among other things, the original bill provided for increased penalties for violators of Hawai`i’s plant and non-domestic animal quarantine laws. Also, it made it easier to prosecute violators by amending the definition section. In a section added by Sen. Donna Ikeda, people judged responsible for introducing pest species can be ordered to reimburse the state its costs of developing and implementing the control program for that pest. Those provisions live on in the final bill. What dropped out, fortunately, was the language proposed by the DOA that would have exempted the Advisory Committee on Plants and Animals from the state’s open meeting law.
Volume 1, Number 1 July 1990