Lawmaker pushing to restore money for West O'ahu campus

By Bruce Dunford
Associated Press

The long-awaited West O'ahu campus for the University of Hawai'i is a better buy than Gov. Linda Lingle's proposed elevated transit lanes to relieve rush-hour traffic, state Sen. Cal Kawamoto said yesterday.

After meeting with Lingle's chief of staff, Bob Awana, the lawmaker held a news conference asking public support in urging Lingle to restore $171 million in construction money for the new campus in Kapolei.

The money had been included in the construction budget submitted by former Gov. Ben Cayetano, but was axed as Lingle cut the budget in half to reduce the amount the state pays each year for borrowed money.

Kawamoto, D-18th (Waipahu, Crestview, Pearl City), acknowledged that lawmakers could put the money in the budget they are preparing, but said without Lingle's support she likely would line-item veto it.

"We want to work with her, impress on her that her ideas on the Second City, her ideas on Ko Olina projects, her concern on the commuter traffic, her ideas on fixed rail or double-decking the highway, all of that comes into play," he said.

With more than one-fourth of the University of Hawai'i-Manoa campus's 18,000 students commuting weekdays from West and Central O'ahu, building a new campus may do more to relieve traffic than the city's bus transit proposal, Kawamoto said.

He said the people who have waited so long for a West O'ahu campus "are upset at the fact that we've talked about it so long, it's a joke already."

In its 26 years of existence, the University of Hawai'i-West O'ahu has never had its own campus. After spending some years on the second floor of a strip mall in Pearl City, the school moved to its current home in portable buildings on the Leeward Community College campus. The West O'ahu college is currently an upper-division campus, meaning its 758 students are juniors and seniors only.