Posted at 8:50 a.m., Thursday, May 30, 2002
Governor to veto Japanese Cultural Center funding
By Bruce Dunford
The governor said he's taking the action in "response from the public and in particular Japanese Americans who have contacted me and told me that they thought that the way it was done was not right."
Susan Kodani, the center's president, has said the center did not directly ask for the money.
Senate Ways and Means Committee chairman Brian Taniguchi, D-Manoa-Moiliili-McCully-Pawaa, said he inserted the appropriation after learning of the problems the nonprofit center has had making its mortgage payments.
The money was earmarked for planning, land acquisition, design and construction for the center.
"I think the senator had the best of intentions. I just think that it is an appropriation that does not have the support of the community, including the Japanese American community," Cayetano said.
Although $10 million was raised largely through private donations to support the eight-year-old cultural center, it had only enough capital to operate on a day-to-day basis, Kodani said in March.
Cayetano said he's still weighing a veto of $5.5 million in the budget for the University of Hawaii's purchase of the old Paradise Park property in Manoa Valley because he's not sure it is a university priority.
It was reported in February that the university was negotiating to buy 150 acres in upper Manoa Valley that includes the former Paradise Park as the site for a Pacific Center for Ecosystem Science to coordinate state, federal and private research into preserving Pacific island ecosystems.
Conservation biologists and archaeologists would use the rain forest setting for their studies, according to Kenneth Kaneshiro, director of the UH Center for Conservation Research and Training. He said the concept of the shared site came up more than 10 years ago.
The center also would provide a site for the UH medical school to study linkages between ecosystem health and human health, addressing such problems as dengue fever, Kaneshiro said.
Cayetano said he needs to discuss the proposal with UH President Evan Dobelle.
"I want to know why the university did not include it in its capital improvement program," he said.
"This was a legislative proposal that came primarily from the (House) speaker's office," Cayetano said. "I think if the university wants to do it, then the university should move forward and get the Board of Regents to support it."
The Paradise Park purchase is not included in the university's priority list of capital improvement projects and if approved would displace projects with a higher priority, he said.
Associated Press Writer
Gov. Ben Cayetano said yesterday he will veto the surprise $8 million construction appropriation slipped into the state budget and approved by lawmakers to bail out the financially troubled Japanese Cultural Center.
