Posted on: Thursday, February 27, 2003

EDITORIAL
State must not raise taxes for wrong reason

It's white-knuckle time over at the state Capitol, where balancing the budget may require a fiscal miracle.

You can't blame lawmakers for looking carefully at every possibility, including those that were anathema in the past, such as tax increases.

But there are only so many places to look. Once special funds have been cleaned out, the choice comes down to revenue hikes vs. spending cuts.

Lawmakers now face a choice between cutting services — and possibly some of the state workers who provide those services — or raising taxes. It's a painful choice because the service cuts they've been looking at so far — ranging from classrooms to state hospitals — will definitely cause real hurt for real people.

And tax hikes have always been seen as a sure-fire way for lawmakers to put themselves out of a job.

Until earlier this month, that is, when a Honolulu Advertiser Hawai'i Poll appeared to indicate a new option.

The poll suggested that local residents are willing — some might say overwhelmingly willing — to pay more taxes to improve public education.

It was that poll that Senate Ways and Means Chairman Brian Taniguchi seized upon in proposing a hike to the state general excise tax from 4 percent to 4.5 percent (slightly offset for residents by a $100-per-person food-tax credit), with the extra revenue to be directed to public education.

But Taniguchi and other lawmakers must make no mistake about what taxpayers were saying in this poll. The poll did not ask respondents if they were willing to pay more taxes to increase the budget of the Department of Education. It certainly didn't ask them if they'd like to pay more to balance the budget.

Instead, it asked: "Would you be willing to pay more taxes if you believe government has developed a good solution to the problem of (A) making needed repairs to public schools and (B) improving quality of education in public schools?"

There is an implicit bargain in that question: "If we come up with an answer, would you be willing to pay for it?" Short answer: "Yes."

But Taniguchi isn't pretending to present an education answer here. It's a zero-sum solution to his budget problem. There's nothing to suggest that when the additional money collected from the excise tax hike is earmarked for education that other sources won't be diverted.

In other words, the tax hike could end up balancing the budget, not improving schools. And taxpayers will not buy that.