Legislators Introduce 3,523 Bills for the 2009 Session

No one can say that members of the 2009 Hawaii Legisla-ture haven't been busy this year. The 76 state legislators introduced 1,680 Senate bills and 1,843 House bills for a total of 3,523 for the 2009 session.

The hot topic for this year is by far HB444 on creating civil unions -- resulting in thousands of emails and hundreds of calls to my Senate office over the past couple of weeks, with people opposed to the bill running 15 to 1 compared to those for it. Other bad bills include: tax increases, more government interference and SB1621 the "card check" bill for organizing unions without a secret ballot; SB1622, the perpetual employee bill, which forces a new owner of a business to retain all of the previous employees, discour-ages the sale of and investment in businesses, and endan-ger all employees.

View all bills introduced in the House and Senate by going to http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/ and clicking on Bill Status and Documents, then scroll down to nearly the bottom of page and see 2009 Regular Session Bills Intro-duced, Passed, and Vetoed.