Spending hiked $800 million in two-year budget

By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer

A House-Senate conference committee agreed yesterday on budgets of $7.1 billion that increase spending by nearly $800 million over the next two years.

Budgets for fiscal 2002 and 2003 go to the floors of both houses next week.

The 2002 budget calls for $3.47 billion in spending, a 12 percent increase from this year. The 2003 budget totals $3.63 billion.

The budgets are less than what was proposed by Gov. Ben Cayetano. The governor submitted a budget request of nearly $7.5 billion over the next two years.

The Legislature slashed the administration's construction budget in half to $500 million over the two years. The administration had proposed spending $1 billion. The governor had proposed increasing the state general treasury by about $1.1 billion to pay for several projects.

The Legislature trimmed about $200 million from the request, said House Finance Chairman Dwight Takamine, D-1st (Hamakua, N. Kohala).

The conference committee also eliminated money for a world-class aquarium in Kaka'ako that Cayetano had championed. The governor had sought $30 million for the project.

But the Legislature did include partial financing for a new University of Hawai'i medical school that Cayetano wants to build in Kaka'ako. About $21 million was set aside for infrastructure, such as roads and sewers, and another $13 million for planning.

Takamine said the Legislature placed education high on its priority list this year. But lawmakers did eliminate from the budget a $27.5 million request for new classroom computers and $4.5 million for textbooks.

Takamine said the Legislature would look at "other vehicles" to finance these requests. He added that legislators followed a budget priority list submitted by the Board of Education and many of the items of the wish list dealt with repair and maintenance of schools.

"With over $600 million of maintenance, and some of it really significant maintenance, we wanted to make sure repair and maintenance was provided," he said.

Other key items added by the Legislature to the budget include:

• $171.5 million over two years for mental health services for special-education children covered by the Felix consent decree.

• $34 million to cover costs of prescription drugs for people on Medicaid.

• $322 million for additional payments to the state's pension fund.

• $73 million to cover additional costs of public worker health benefits.