By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief
Gov. Ben Cayetano’s plans for a new world-class aquarium in Kaka‘ako hit a serious snag yesterday when House lawmakers scratched the proposal from their version of the state budget.
The House Finance Committee yesterday approved a draft budget that makes deep cuts in Cayetano’s proposals for new construction spending, slashing $600 million from the $1 billion Cayetano had planned to spend on building over the next two years.
The Kaka‘ako aquarium was one of dozens of construction projects that failed to get financing.
House Finance Chairman Dwight Takamine said lawmakers could add later the $30 million Cayetano wanted for the aquarium, but for the moment it is not a priority.
However, the House did include about $150 million in the budget for a new University of Hawai‘i medical school that Cayetano wants to build in Kaka‘ako.
House lawmakers also made room in the budget for several tax relief proposals, including an earned-income tax credit for the working poor; a tax credit to partly offset the excise tax on food; and an increase in the standard deductions taxpayers can claim to reduce their taxable incomes.
Cayetano proposed pumping an extra $1.1 billion from the state general treasury into everything from education to drug treatment for prisoners, but the House Finance Committee trimmed about $215 million from that request.
Among other things, House lawmakers are proposing to cut about $25 million from the $197 million the administration requested in new spending over the next two years for mental health services for special education children covered by the the Felix consent decree.
But the Finance Committee did set aside $27.5 million for new computers for schools and $4.5 million more for textbooks.
The budget goes to the full House for a floor vote, where it is virtually certain to win approval. From there, it will pass over to the Senate, where lawmakers will redraft the budget according to their preferences.
In late April, near the end of the session, House and Senate negotiators will sit down to work out the differences between their versions of the bills.
Cayetano had proposed spending $7.5 billion over the next two years on state government, a hefty increase from the $6.6 billion the state spent over the previous two years.
But that extra spending didn’t include money for public employee raises, and House and Senate lawmakers have been searching for ways to do that. The House Finance Committee chose to cut into Cayetano’s new spending initiatives in part to make room in the budget for the raises.
"I believe there’s a commitment to provide for the cost of collective bargaining," said Takamine, D-1st (Hamakua, N. Kohala).
The state is negotiating with 12,000 unionized public school teachers and 3,100 University of Hawai‘i faculty members, and already has reached contract settlements with about 11,300 members of the United Public Workers union.
About 23,000 white-collar government employees in the Hawai‘i Government Employees Association also are asking lawmakers to pay for raises the union won in arbitration last year. Cayetano has said the arbitration decision is illegal, and is refusing to pay those raises.
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