Hawai'i fares well in budget bill

By Janis L. Magin
Associated Press

Hawai'i held on to a large amount of federal money in the new federal spending bill and managed to pick up new money for programs ranging from $4 million to combat the Big Island's "ice" drug problem to $50,000 for a community health center on Kaua'i.

The $397.4 billion appropriations bill passed by Congress on Thursday includes hundreds of millions of nonmilitary government dollars for Hawai'i, according to Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawai'i. The bill, which pays for operations of nearly every federal agency for the current fiscal year, awaits President Bush's signature.

Hawai'i's major federal dollars — $40 million for impact aid for schools, $31 million for Native Hawaiian education, $29.7 million for federal transit administration formula funds, $9.6 million for the Hawaiian Homelands community development block grant program — remained either roughly the same as last year or slightly higher. The East-West Center at the University of Hawai'iiManoa will receive $18 million, $4 million more than last year.

Money for many Hawai'i programs — from agriculture research to brown tree snake control to educational programs — will remain fairly level, something that was hard-won in a competition among states for tight federal dollars, said Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i.

"Everybody had to sacrifice a bit," he said.

One program that will see its financial support slashed is the childhood rural asthma project, which began last year with $500,000 to help children with asthma in rural and remote areas. The program was allotted $150,000 this year.

The $4 million for the Hawai'i County Comprehensive Methamphetamine Response Program is one of several items in this year's measure that have not previously received federal money.

"Interest in this (problem) is not new," Abercrombie said. "This is an attempt to try and work with local jurisdictions within the state to address this problem."

Abercrombie noted that use of the drug commonly known as "ice" is often a precipitating factor for juvenile and adult crime. At the Hawai'i Island Ice Summit in August, Hawai'i County Police Chief Lawrence Mahuna told officials that from 1998 to 2000 there was a 10-fold increase in crystal methamphetamine arrests on the Big Island — from 28 to 282 — and that the drug's reach extends to middle schools.

The state will also get $2.5 million for the Hawai'i High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program, the same amount as fiscal 2002, according to the list of Hawai'i initiatives issued by Inouye's office.

Among the many programs for Native Hawaiians, Papa Ola Lokahi and the Native Hawaiian Health Care Systems will receive $9 million, a $2 million increase over last year, to help make primary care, health education and disease prevention services available for native Hawaiians.

There's money for community health centers on Kaua'i and Maui, and in Waimanalo and Wai'anae. There's also money for "high tech training" on Maui; for rural computer training there; and for a program for girls and science.

The University of Hawai'i's Hilo and Maui campuses will each receive money for specific programs, and there is money for the construction of a Kona emergency homeless shelter in Kailua.

Construction projects at Kaua'i's Kikiaola small-boat harbor and Maui's Ma'alaea Harbor also received money.

In addition to road improvements on O'ahu, Maui and the Big Island, transportation dollars will go toward public transit, including up to $20 million to spend on a ferry, which would likely operate between Leeward O'ahu and downtown Honolulu, Abercrombie said.

The bill designates millions of dollars for the ocean and the environment, including $6.3 million for the protection of the endangered sea turtle. That amount is more than twice the appropriation for

fiscal 2002, the result of more knowledge about the endangered sea creatures, Abercrombie said.

The state will also receive $5 million for economic disaster assistance to the longline fishing industry, and $3 million for the Hawai'i Longline Fisheries Observers program, intended to help fishermen obey the laws while they try to make a living.

"How can we harvest in the sea and at the same time not decimate it?" Abercrombie said. "We don't want to create the water equivalent of the dust bowl."

The budget includes $700,000 in aid to the state to combat invasive species and $1 million for coral reefs. Abercrombie said reef money is related to the designation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a National Marine Sanctuary.

A December 2000 executive order signed by President Clinton set aside 84 million acres of ocean around the archipelago as the Northwestern Hawaiian Island Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve, the largest protected area ever established in the United States.

Federal officials last year began drafting a management plan to cover preservation of the coral and regulate fishing in the waters off the 10 mostly uninhabited islets and atolls extending 1,200 miles northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands.