Spending bills rain on money committees
By Bruce Dunford
Associated Press
As the House and Senate money committees wrestle with an additional $60 million shortfall in tax revenues in trying to balance the state budget, their colleagues flood them with bills asking for more and more state spending.
Legislators wrestling with how to balance the budget face many programs, including: • $5 million — Preschool Open Doors program for low-income families • $750,000 — Family Centers • $750,000 — Maui Renal Dialysis Center • $645,000 — Diversion services and child protective services • $500,000 — Development of an agribusiness incubator at the University of Hawai'i • $437,000 — Pineapple research • $200,000 — Operate and maintain East Kaua'i Irrigation System • $100,000 — 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War
All are presented as laudable expenditures spread statewide.
Programs need state dollars
There's money for mandatory physical and medical forensic examinations of children in protective custody, money to run the Poison Center 24 hours a day, and $100,000 for ceremonies to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War.
Others would appropriate money for planning an alternative access road on O'ahu's North Shore, $200,000 to operate and maintain the East Kaua'i Irrigation System, and an undetermined amount for an ambulance stationed at Hawaiian Ocean View Estates on the Big Island.
The list goes on — $437,000 for pineapple research, $500,000 for development of an agribusiness incubator at the University of Hawai'i, $750,000 for Family Centers, $750,000 for a Maui Renal Dialysis Center, $5 million for the Preschool Open Doors program for low-income families and $645,000 for "diversion services and child protective services to target families."
When he was chairman of the House Finance Committee, House Speaker Calvin Say, D-20th (St. Louis Hts., Palolo, Wilhelmina Rise), would complain that the other committees were making him "the bad guy" when he rejected such praiseworthy requests.
"Ninety-five percent of these bills will not survive," he said. "We may keep them alive for the purpose of further discussion, but in essence a lot of them will fall between the cracks."
House Finance Committee Chairman Dwight Takamine, D-1st (N. Hilo, Hamakua, N. Kohala), sent a memorandum to all committee chairpersons, telling them to pick three appropriations bills that they see as their top priorities, Say said.
Senate President Robert Bunda, D-22nd (North Shore, Wahiawa), said as a matter of practice, the "subject matter" committee, such as the Health Committee or the Human Services Committee, will approve bills "that are important to the committee and the community."
It's then up to the Senate Ways and Means Committee "to prioritize all those bills, and he's going to have a tough time doing that," Bunda said. "It's gotten worse where the economy has not really picked up and the budget has gotten strained."
It'll be up to the chairpersons for each area to identify which of their bills are of utmost priority, Bunda said.
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Brian Taniguchi, D-10th (Manoa, McCully), said having the individual committees advocate for special additional spending is traditional, "and I've come to accept it."
"The difficulty this year is going to be that we don't really have any money, so it's more a matter of what's subtracted rather than what's added," he said.
