Maui does OK in budget, so far

County’s delegation pleased, for the most part; final vote is next week 

The Maui News
April 27, 2002

By MARK ADAMS
Staff Writer

HONOLULU — All things considered, Maui County could have done a lot worse.

The state Legislature crunched numbers Friday as members rushed to meet a midnight deadline for getting money bills out of conference committee and ready for a final vote next week. 

When the proposed budget — cobbled together by lawmakers to offset a $300 million shortfall tied to the post-Sept. 11 economic downturn — took shape, members of Maui’s legislative delegation came away satisfied for the most part.

Severe cuts that had been threatened were staved off as lawmakers took $29 million in interest income from the Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund, $10 million from the state’s “rainy day” reserve, $140 million from special funds and instituted 2.5 percent across-the-board cuts to state departments.

Last-minute additions to the budget included reinstituting funding for nine Neighbor Island counselors in the state Office of Veterans Services, restoring $500,000 to the A-Plus after-school program and finding $1.9 million to continue Hawaiian language immersion programs.

Maui legislators said the county did particularly well in the area of capital improvements.

Funding was tentatively allocated for everything from a locker room at Lahainaluna High School to road projects, an expansion of the Makawao library, an astronomy research center in Kula, a $38 million bond authorization to fund the first phase of master-planned improvements at Maui Memorial Medical Center and $900,000 put back in the budget to provide additional long-term care beds at Hale Makua.

“I’m very pleased with the capital improvement budget,” said state Sen. Jan Yagi Buen on Friday. “Maui County got more than any of the Neighbor Islands. We did pretty well after all the problems and frustrations we had to go through.”

As the CIP budget was being finalized late Thursday night, Buen said Senate Ways and Means Chairman Brian Taniguchi looked at her and said, “Well, it looks like the island of Maui is going to sink” under the weight of the projects being approved.

It wasn’t all good news. As the clock ticked toward the midnight deadline for appropriations to be finalized, Sen. J. Kalani English said it did not look like

the $3 million he had requested to continue the work of the state Emergency Environmental Work Force would materialize. He had hoped the bill could be carried over into next week under a waiver from the Legislature’s leadership, but was having trouble finding support.

English said he wasn’t giving up, and would be working to find private contributions to continue the work if a last-minute reprieve did not arrive. The effort has involved teams of workers assembled to fight mosquitoes that carry dengue fever as well as other invasive species. The task forces have provided workers with needed jobs and a sense that they are helping their community, the senator said.

But English was pleased for the most part with the legislative session.

Significant legislation is moving toward final passage, he said, including a bill that will finally give the counties in the state immunity from liability in the event of injuries at beaches in the state.

He also supported creation of a task force aimed at drafting a law that will give legal status to hanai children adopted informally in Hawaii, a common practice of the traditional Hawaiian family. English was himself the hanai adoptee of his grandparents before being officially adopted through the court system.

He was also pleased with the CIP allocations.

“We did unbelievably well on highways,” he said.

There is money in the tentative CIP budget for traffic intersection improvements, $13.2 million to widen Honoapiilani Highway, $4 million for the interim widening of Piilani Highway and another $1 million to fund an environmental impact statement process for a permanent widening.

There is also $30.5 million for the first phase of the widening of Mokulele Highway, $4 million for the long-discussed Kihei-Upcountry road, and $40.5 million in airport and federal funds for a new access road to the Kahului Airport.

Central Maui Rep. Bob Nakasone said he thought the county did well in the areas of health and public safety.

The $38 million for Maui Memorial Medical Center has been needed for some time, he said, and he also noted that there is $20.5 million in the CIP budget for a 100-bed expansion of Maui Community Correctional Center, which is listed as one of the most overcrowded jail facilities in the state.

“We did pretty good,” he said.

The $8.6 million for a new Kula facility for the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy will allow expansion of research programs using the astronomical observatories on Haleakala. 

IfA Assistant Director Michael Maberry said the existing facility in an old house at Waiakoa cannot accommodate the growing number of UH faculty and graduate assistants conducting work on Maui. 

“We now have scientists living on Maui, but we have no laboratory space and no office space for them,” he said. 

Plans call for developing a facility on a new site in Kula with adequate room for the growing number of astronomy research programs possible from new and upgraded observatories on the summit, he said. 

Rep. Ron Davis, whose district includes Molokai, was pleased with a $1 million appropriation for improvements at Molokai General Hospital.

He was not pleased with the fate of other legislation, including a failed attempt to create local island school boards to replace the centralized Board of Education.

Teachers on Molokai have said they feel like they get little support from far-off administrators, and the power to make decisions locally would have been a good step for education, he said. Fellow Republican, Rep. Kika Bukoski, was also very interested in decentralizing the educational system.

Davis said he thinks the Legislature’s committee system also needs some work, with chairpersons given too much power to set the agenda at the expense of adequate discussion and debate.

Davis, Bukoski and Rep. Chris Halford are all members of the growing Republican minority in the House, which now stands at 19 out of 51 members.

Halford said he expects the kind of treatment doled out by the majority Democrats.

“The majority has created a scheme that diminished participation by the members, and as a result it’s difficult for good legislation to pass,” Halford said. “The committees are fiefdoms controlled by the chair, and extraordinary control is given to the chairs in conference committees. Personal power is first — if you can find a way to help the community in the process, fine, but it’s not the goal.”

Halford said the number of highway projects in the budget is good, but added taxpayers are still being shortchanged because of waste in the state Department of Transportation, which he said suffers from poor management practices and a lack of accountability.

“They’re squandering resources,” he said.

Projects in the budget face a final vote next week. Gov. Ben Cayetano must then release funding once he gives final approval to the spending package.

Buen noted that lawmakers put another $900,000 in the budget to pay for additional beds at Hale Makua that will in turn free up space at congested Maui Memorial, where a couple dozen beds are occupied by patients who should be in a nursing home.

Buen said an existing $900,000 appropriation will lapse June 30, with the Cayetano administration refusing to release it. She hopes residents will lobby the governor to allow the new appropriation to be spent.

The senator welcomed several other CIP appropriations, including money to pay for irrigation systems Upcountry, funding to help drill a deep monitoring well to assess the capacity and health of the Iao aquifer, and money to buy 5 acres adjacent to Waihee School for a playing field, a project her father began years ago.

There is planning money for a new Maui Lani Elementary School, which will be built by the developer of the Wailuku subdivision and turned over to the state, similar to the process used to develop Kamalii Elementary School in Kihei. 

Bills that have survived legislative conference committees — including a bottle recycling bill and a measure that aims at regulating health insurance rates — will now be taken up by both the House and Senate for final votes next week as the Legislature’s 2002 session heads toward adjournment on Thursday.

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