House bill cuts $1 million from state libraries
By Treena Shapiro
Advertiser Staff Writer
State libraries would take an additional $1 million budget cut over the next two years, under a bill approved yesterday by the House Finance Committee.
The chief casualty was money designated to open Kapolei Public Library.
Yesterday was the 28th day of the 60-day session.
An earlier budget cut of $500,000 for this year prompted state Librarian Virginia Lowell to order all libraries to cut back to a five-day, 40-hour weekly schedule.
The latest proposed cuts are part of the $7.6 billion, two-year budget bill that the House will send to the Senate.
The committee decided to cut $1.5 million that had been designated for expenses to open Kapolei Public Library. But it also restored half of a separate $1 million budget cut the library system as a whole was to take, for a net loss to the libraries of $1 million.
State Librarian Virginia Lowell was out of town and could not be reached for comment. State library special assistant John Penebacker said he could not comment without seeing the plan.
Libraries were not the only state service cut. The House version of the budget reflects not only the $73.6 million in departmental cuts proposed by Gov. Linda Lingle, but would make an additional $14 million in cuts suggested by the House Finance Committee.
Committee chairman Dwight Takamine, D-1st (N. Hilo, Hamakua, N. Kohala) said normally the committee would have restored the cuts to the Department of Education, the University of Hawai'i and social services agencies, but because of the possibility of war in Iraq, the committee decided to prepare for economic hard times.
Takamine added that lawmakers are waiting to hear the Council of Revenues projection of state tax revenues. The budget is based on an assumption that tax revenues will grow by 6.1 percent, but the growth may be only 4.1 percent, Takamine said, which would mean the state would collect $61 million less than anticipated. With this bleak outlook, Takamine said he did not want to restore funding to the agencies only to have to cut it again later.
The Finance Committee yesterday provided only an overview of the budget proposal without providing much detail. Assistant Minority Policy Leader Mark Moses said even some committee members had not seen the new draft of the budget before voting on it yesterday.
Moses, R-40th (Makakilo, Kapolei, Royal Kunia), and other Republicans Rep. Mark Jernigan, R-6th (Kailua, Keauhou) and Rep. Colleen Meyer, R-47th (Ha'iku, Kahalu'u, La'ie) approved the bill with reservations. Moses said he would have liked to have been able to see the new draft of the bill before the vote, since it will be too late to make amendments when it moves to the House floor. Without details, he said, it is unclear what the changes will mean. "You have to sit down and see what does this actually do to people, and that's very difficult."
