Update on Legislative bills: HB1499 & SB1263

Aloha all,

Our bill has been submitted as a House bill with a companion bill in the Senate. it has been read and referred to committees, which means we need testimony! The final draft of the bill, however, had some critical changes and omittions, so I have drafted testimony supporting the bill WITH specified revisions. Our agreed preliminary draft of the suggested bill is posted below in comments (so you can see our position & intent), and hopefully both the House and Senate bills will correspond shortly. Regardless, we need your testimony. This can be done in a couple of ways-- you can join our coalition (just send me your full name, address, phone, and e-mail address) or e-mail me at tattoo@lava.net and I will send you the addresses, and a sample of how it needs to be formated via e-mail. Please feel free to send any other feedback as well.

I will be in touch shortly regarding the other bill-- the one exempting practitioners of Hawaiian tattooing from any and all health regulations, which we are NOT in support of. We do support traditional tattooing, of course, which is inclufded in our current bills, but we believe any and all tattooing, regardless of method, should be regulated by the same health precautions.