Teachers may see lower healthcare costs under a new law that restores the right of their union to purchase health coverage outside of the state's insurance program.

Teachers had been able to get insurance through a special voluntary trust until 2001, when the state Legislature created a single health plan for all public employees.

Gov. Linda Lingle, facing a veto deadline at noon today, announced yesterday that she would allow the bill to become law without her signature. The governor also decided not to veto a bill that prohibits discrimination in real-estate transactions because of sexual orientation, which had the support of both gay rights activists and Brigham Young University-Hawai'i, which received an exemption from the provisions of the bill.

The governor released a final list of 28 vetoes yesterday. State House and Senate lawmakers will meet in a one-day session today to consider overrides. Lawmakers need a two-thirds vote in each chamber to override a veto.

House Majority Leader Marcus Oshiro, D-39th (Wahiawa), said among the vetoes lawmakers hope to override is a bill that would freeze new state workers' compensation rules until 2007. Democrats contend the Lingle administration went around the Legislature in adopting the rules in May.

Another bill targeted for an override would require the state Department of Health to receive approval from the governor before changing how it uses state-owned land in the Waimano Ridge area of O'ahu. The bill was passed in response to an outcry from the community, which felt left out of decisions on whether the area should be used for a sex-offender treatment facility, a drug treatment facility and a state laboratory.

Teachers, meanwhile, had lobbied for the healthcare trust. The law is a three-year pilot so the state can compare the cost differences between a trust and the state's health plan.

"Teachers will be extremely happy to see it go back into existence," said Roger Takabayashi, president of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association.

Takabayashi said that in some cases, prescription drugs were three times as costly under the state plan than under the teachers' old plan. A primary distinction of the new Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Association plan over the previous teachers' plan is the inclusion of retired teachers. They previously had to join the state's umbrella health plan upon retirement.

Lingle cited concerns that by having younger, more recent retirees in the new trust, rates for those in the Hawai'i Employer Union Trust Fund might increase.

Lingle also doubted that safeguards for fraud could be successfully established, but Takabayashi said, "We have all the restrictions on it that we could possibly have. No one can run a cleaner organization."