(BIVN) – The Hawaii State Attorney General is asking for an extra $2.5 million dollars in the department’s budget to cover the cost of security operations during large incidents. AG Doug Chin – who is stepping aside to run for Congress – presented the request to the Senate Ways and Means and Judiciary Committees during a January 9 informational briefing.

“People just say: is that Mauna Kea?” Chin said. “Are we talking about security operations for that? And I guess the best answer that I can give for that is that the state security operations could be for an event like a Mauna Kea protest. It could be for any episode of mass violence, or civil unrest, or any event that involves official state government leaders or national leaders.”

Its not the first time Chin has made the request.

“The state security operations budget request is one that we made last year,” Chin said. “It was denied. It didn’t make it into the budget. But it’s not based upon, so much, our own events that have existed in Hawaii, but really based upon recommendations that have come from the Las Vegas shooting, or from the Charlottesville protests that that had resulted in a woman being run over by a motor vehicle. So really, it was a national best practices recommendation that’s been coming from different jurisdictions.”

“The experience of state law enforcement in the last few years has been that there’s been times when it’s not just County law enforcement that’s responding to this, but it’s state law enforcement. It’s our sheriff’s, it’s DOCARE, it’s our investigators at ATG who are responding to that,” Chin said.

“This is $2.5 million that would go into the Department of the Attorney General’s budget, correct?” asked State Senator Laura Thielen. “It’s not to add additional DOCARE officers?” $2.5 million is about the budget for DOCARE total for quite a large number of officers, Thielen added.

“It’s not additional staffing,” Chin answered. “It’s overtime, it’s travel, it’s equipment.”

“It’s for distribution to all of the state agencies,” Chin added.

The 2018 State Legislative Session opens on Wednesday, January 17.