Posted on: Sunday, September 12, 2004

EDITORIAL
Budget picture should make the money flow

Gov. Linda Lingle's budget director, Georgina Kawamura, is being properly cautious in the face of more good economic news from the state Council on Revenues.

But while caution is appropriate, there comes a time when the right thing to do is to spend some of the money that has been yanked out of the pockets of taxpayers over the past year or so.

And to the degree money continues to be withheld, it should be on the basis of sound fiscal management, not because there are policy differences between the administration and the Legislature.

The latest Council on Revenues projection says the state will end up a healthy $300 million ahead of where it stood last fiscal year. That projection is a big jump from the $140 million gain forecast by the council in May and is substantially greater than what the Legislature had before it when it wrote the budget.

It is true that there remain projections, not actual dollars collected. But it was similar, if lower, projections earlier that led to a policy of caution.

Now, in a continuing abundance of caution, Lingle and her administration has held back on many programs and grants-in-aid approved by the Legislature.

This includes full funding for Act 51, the so-called "Reinventing Education Act" and almost all of some $14 million appropriated for an anti-ice program. Elsewhere, some $22 million out of $29 million in grants-in-aid have been restricted.

It is time to get that money flowing. Clearly, concerns about running the state into the red have been eased.

Budget responsibility remains a priority, but it is time to combine that responsibility with flexibility and responsiveness to legislative policy direction.

Kawamura said much of the money will be released once programs are reviewed to determine whether "they will provide achievable results for those constituents those programs are supposed to be helping."

Remember, for the most part these are not new programs. Rather, they are existing programs which the Legislature, in its wisdom, has approved as being effective and worth supporting.

The executive is responsible for managing the budget. That does not mean it should substitute its policy vision for that of the legislative, once a decision has been made.