FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                      June 30, 2006   Release M-74-06

 HANNEMANN NAMED TO HEAD U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS COMMITTEE

            Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann has been named chairman of the United States Conference of Mayors Standing Committee on Tourism, Arts, Parks, Entertainment and Sports.

            This comes on the heels of Hannemann’s election to the Conference of Mayors Advisory Board at the 74^th annual meeting earlier this month in Las Vegas.

            Hannemann was notified of his selection by Michael Guido, mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, who was elected president of the Conference of Mayors at the annual meeting.

            Hannemann immediately accepted the appointment.

            “It is an honor for Honolulu as well as all of the counties of the state of Hawaii,” he said. “The appointment recognizes Honolulu’s leadership in all five of those fields. We’ll be happy to offer our mana‘o to other members of the Conference of Mayors. And this is bound to create new opportunities for Honolulu as well. For example, this can only help strengthen Honolulu’s position as one of the top destinations in global tourism, and it could help further my vision of Chinatown as an international center for culture and the arts.”

            The U.S. Conference of Mayors is a nationwide organization made up of the mayors of America’s 1,139 cities with populations of 30,000 or more. Hannemann is the first official from Hawaii to serve in a national leadership position with the Conference of Mayors since Honolulu Mayor Neal Blaisdell served as its president in the 1960s.

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Contact:

Bill Brennan, 527-6928

Mark Matsunaga, 527-5767