Posted on: Wednesday, May 14, 2003

EDITORIAL
Budget brinkmanship is a poor council tactic

It has become increasingly obvious that there will be blood on the ground once the work of writing the 2003-2004 Honolulu city budget is complete.

The only question is who will spill the most blood and where inevitable citizen anger will be directed.

According to City Hall reporter Treena Shapiro, Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi intends to present a budget later this month that will propose between $2 million and $3 million in specific cuts out of the $1.178 billion budget and force another $14 million to $15 million in unspecified cuts.

Those larger forced cuts would be the result of her intention to eliminate increases in various city fees worth that amount. She would leave it to the Harris administration to figure out where the cuts would come from.

Frankly, this is the latest round of brinksmanship surrounding the budget process that does not serve the taxpayers well.

Kobayashi and some of her council colleagues are upset that the Harris administration has backed them into a corner by presenting a budget that cannot be balanced without those new fees and about $40 million in property tax hikes.

That may be so, but the way out of the corner is to sit down and talk with the administration on ways to balance the budget through honest dialogue and compromise. These conversations should also involve the public — a prospect that has dimmed since the next meeting of the Budget Committee will be the final one, on May 22-23. The full council votes June 4.

It is our impression that the city operating budget has been scaled back to the point where it could not easily sustain a $15 million shortfall. Now, we might not be at this crisis point if the city had been willing to gradually raise fees and taxes over the past several years, rather than stubbornly trying to stick with existing revenues.

We want our government to be frugal with our tax dollars, but it is obvious that the natural growth of the city along with the inevitable inflation-driven increase in costs would call for a larger budget.

Still, here we are. It is time for a little less gamesmanship and political fighting at City Hall and for a little more effort to come up with a joint resolution to what is clearly a very tough situation.

Toward that end, the council should consider a special informational public hearing on the budget prior to its wrapup formal meeting on the 23rd. The purpose of such a meeting would be to let the public see the council proposal, the administration proposal and good-faith efforts by both sides to bridge their differences.

The taxpayers, after all, are less interested in whose political blood will be spilled than they are in an honest budget.