EDITORIAL
Budget drama has not played last act

Scare tactics or exercise in grim reality?

You could go either way with the effort now under way at the Legislature to put a face on a looming shortfall facing the state budget.

A worst-case scenario laid out for members of the House Finance Committee painted a picture of felons and welfare moms thrown out on the street, kindergarten kids with no school to go to, libraries closed across the state, bigger school classes and a virtual end to crucial services such as drug treatment for inmates.

Not a pretty picture by any means. But also not a picture we have to accept.

As is usually the case when officials are asked to go through the budget-cutting scenario, it is the programs most valued and most visible to the taxpaying public that seem to be closest to the ax.

Some of this is inevitable because critical support and administrative services are not readily apparent to the public, but cannot be eliminated without doing away with state programs altogether.

Still, it is instructive to look at the proposed cuts in discretionary spending outlined, for example, by the Department of Education. Nice-to-have programs ranging from computer education and special summer school to boarding at Lahainaluna and drop-out prevention programs were tabbed with 100 percent cuts. A vast array of other discretionary school-level programs were identified for reductions of at least 40 percent.

Turn to the administrative level — instructional support, central office programs and administration — and the cuts were almost all in the low teens or even single digits.

There may be good reasons for this, but the plain fact is that when the budget ax is raised, it is the programs and services that you can touch, smell and feel that tend to be threatened first.

While this example happens to look at the Department of Education, the same pattern emerges in most other departments. The fundamental infrastructure of the department remains while the constituent-driven and "investment"-style programs tend to get hurt.

Fundamentally, this exercise is valuable because it does tend to isolate those areas that can be eliminated and those that would generate a political firestorm if they are cut.

But the doomsday scenario painted at the money committee hearings is unlikely. For starters, it must be remembered that the "shortfall" of some $315 million for the coming year is a shortfall of projected spending that represents true net growth for the state budget. Even if the entire $315 million were made up by cuts (an unlikely scenario), the budget for the coming fiscal year would be about as big as the one we are in now.

Now that everyone's eyes have been widened, it is time to get down to the tough work. Raise revenues where possible ("sin" taxes are the most likely possibility); take what is reasonable from cash-flush special funds (including the Hurricane Fund, which can be used without destroying it) and make trims where they are least likely to do lasting damage.

None of this will be easy. And in an election year, none of it is popular.

But that is what lawmakers are elected to do.