HILO, Hawai'i — Big Island police are warning there may be fewer officers patrolling the streets unless state lawmakers agree to extend a 2001 law allowing the county to contract with private companies for services such as security monitoring in police station cellblocks.

Big Island Mayor Harry Kim became more involved in the lobbying effort for House Bill 1171 yesterday, calling the offices of House Speaker Calvin Say and House Finance Chairman Marcus Oshiro in an effort to persuade lawmakers to hold a hearing on the bill.

At issue is Act 90, a 2001 law that authorized the state and counties to contract with private companies for services that have traditionally been provided by public workers.

The state Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that under state civil service law, the state and counties need specific permission from the state Legislature before they can hire private companies to do work traditionally handled by state and county employees.

Act 90 provided that authority, but the law has a "sunset date" that will cause it to expire June 30. Lawmakers have been unwilling to hold hearings on bills that would extend the law.

Big Island Deputy Finance Director Nancy Crawford said the county now has contracts worth about $2.2 million a year, not counting the contract for security services in police cellblocks. The cellblock security contract cost the county another $458,000 last year, said police Maj. Jay Enanoria, who is in charge of the police administrative services division.

Enanoria said the company the county hired provides 10 security workers a day to monitor cells in Kona and Hilo. Without contract workers, the department would have to use its own officers to monitor the cells, he said.

"If this law is not allowed to stay in place, we will have to have police officers watch prisoners," he said. "The reality would be fewer officers on our beats."

The Big Island Police Department already has 37 vacancies, and ending the security contract would mean the department will be even more shorthanded, he said.

Kim said he wants the county to also be able to continue to contract with nonprofit organizations that hire people with disabilities to provide janitorial and other services for the county. That arrangement provides a benefit to both the nonprofits' clients and to county residents, he said.

Honolulu and Maui county officials said they support extending Act 90, but are not as concerned about the immediate effect of the possible expiration of the law because they haven't used it.

Kalbert Young, finance director for Maui, said officials there reached their own negotiated settlement with the public worker unions that allows the county to contract with nonprofit rehabilitative organizations for the disabled for janitorial services in county facilities.

In Honolulu, city spokesman Bill Brennan said city officials have contracts for some security services and landscaping work, but city officials believe those contracts do not fall under Act 90.

"We haven't used it, but we believe it's an important management tool to have and keep in place," Brennan said.

The Hawai'i Government Employees Association has announced that one of its priorities this year is to have Act 90 expire. A union representative said that is because the law also includes provisions for "managed competition" that could lead to large-scale privatization of government services.

That managed competition process was never used, but the union still opposes the full-scale privatization of government services, said Nora Nomura, legislative officer for HGEA.

As for the contracts with nonprofit organizations that hire the disabled for janitorial and other services, "we're not concerned about these kinds of contracts," Nomura said. "It's the full-scale privatization of an agency" that raises concerns in the union, she said.

Nomura said the state has for years contracted with private companies in areas such as mental health services in which public workers customarily handled the work but were unable to handle the extra load and the need for those services grew.

"We certainly didn't stop it because there wasn't the capacity for our existing employees to expand and do all of this work, and that has happened in many places for years," she said.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.