HB993 Summary

• Changes references from "director" to "administrator" throughout emergency management statutes to reflect organizational terminology.

• Expands the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency's duties to include ten specific functions: preparing comprehensive emergency management plans, assigning agency responsibilities, adopting county plan standards, making legislative recommendations, promoting innovations, conducting public awareness campaigns, coordinating emergency activities, implementing training programs, reviewing state agency procedures, and coordinating executive orders.

• Requires counties to submit annual reports to the administrator on the status and updates of their comprehensive emergency management plans.

• Increases the governor's spending limit for immediate disaster relief from $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 per single emergency or disaster.

• Increases the administrator's authority to use emergency reserve corps funds from $100,000 to $250,000 per year and expands the reserve corps to support day-to-day activities in addition to emergencies and disasters; establishes a $2,500,000 funding threshold for carryover of unspent disaster relief funds to the next fiscal year.