Posted on: Thursday, July 26, 2001

City seeks resolution of expenses for ADB

By Kapono Dowson
Advertiser Staff Writer

City Council members are still looking for some reassurance that the city will be reimbursed for nearly $4 million worth of security expenses incurred during May's five-day Asian Development Bank Conference.

Yesterday, the council Policy Committee recommended that the full council push for the reimbursement and also proposed a new policy to deal with costs of future conferences.

The first resolution made a formal request to the governor, the Legislature and federal lawmakers for reimbursement of security expenses.

The second proposed establishing a cost-sharing formula for police security and other services provided for international conventions.

Officials said concern that the international banking conference would draw large-scale protests promp-

ted the city to launch an extensive security effort, but the event drew only peaceful demonstrations and much smaller numbers of activists than expected.

Councilman John Henry Felix said he spoke to U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye about the issue. Inouye, D-Hawai'i, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has placed

$5 million for city and state reimbursement into the appropriation budget, of which $3.86 million would be for the city's conference-related expenses.

"Inouye is responsive to our anxiety. He'll do his best to hold on to this number," Felix said. "But it's not a done deal, yet."

The appropriations package will have to pass through both the Senate and House before any allocation to the state. It would then be up to the state to give it to the city. Some council members said they were concerned about receiving the money from the state.

City spokeswoman Carol Costa said she didn't think being reimbursed by the state would be a problem.

"We worked closely with the state on all aspects of the conference," she said. "Reimbursement should not be complicated."

Council members want cost-sharing responsibilities to be set up among state, federal and city agencies before any other events take place.

Council policy chairman Romy Cachola said the state could get back some costs from taxes generated by the increase in convention business, but the city lacks such options.

He said better planning could prevent future city losses and reimbursement problems.