Newswatch

By Star-Bulletin Staff

Friday, March 7, 1997

That budget advanced to the Senate yesterday from the House, but not before a sometimes testy, two-hour floor debate over government spending.

The proposed budget, said House Finance Vice Chairwoman Bertha Kawakami (D, Hanapepe), is already "lean and some would say it is mean."

Council on Revenues chairman Paul Brewbaker yesterday said the panel could "plausibly" lower its revenue projections for the next fiscal year - which now stands at 7.5 percent - 1 to 3 percentage points.

Each percentage point equals about $30 million.

"The House and Senate are correctly anticipating a change to occur," Brewbaker said. The discussion at a council workshop earlier this week points toward a lowering of the state's projected growth, he explained.

Brewbaker's comments came about an hour after House members passed their version of the budget, knowing that they and their Senate colleagues will still have to make additional cuts.

House Finance Chairman Calvin Say (D, Palolo) has instructed his staff to look for an additional $90 million to $150 million to cut.

Police yesterday pulled the bodies of the four men from the two-door sedan that went off the roadway.

The men have been tentatively identified but police are not releasing names until relatives of all the victims are notified.

The car was driven by a 22-year-old man, police said. Two of his passengers were 25 and another was 24.

The vehicle was traveling south toward Hilo when it apparently crossed the center line and ran off the makai-side roadway.

The car struck a bridge, overturned and plunged down the gulch, police said.

The board, meeting at Nanakuli High School last night, unanimously approved a policy saying schools may set conditions for student participation in commencement exercises as long as those conditions are "clear, reasonable and justifiable."

That's a sharp departure from the initial recommendation of the board's own Student Services Committee, which voted last August to open commencement to all students who meet requirements for a diploma and do not owe library or other fines.

The committee also said the graduating class - not school officials - may set dress codes for the ceremonies.

The committee was responding to concerns raised by then-board Chairman Mitsugi Nakashima that some students were being unfairly denied an important rite of passage. In 1995, 17 students at Waimea High School on Nakashima's home island of Kauai were barred from commencement because they had more than 14 unexcused absences.

But principals balked at the committee's recommendation, and state Superintendent Herman Aizawa requested the proposal be put on hold to allow them to review it. Board leadership approved Aizawa's request, said Student Services Committee Chairman Mike Compton.

A team of eight principals helped the committee draft the new proposal, approved by the full board last night. Suggestions were solicited from school administrators statewide, Compton said.

The Supreme Court ruled last Friday that Hawaii County's contract with Waste Management of Hawaii Inc. for operation of the Puuanahulu landfill is illegal because it violates the state civil service law.

"A lot of people read the decision initially as applying only to the landfill on the Big Island," said Hawaii County Mayor Stephen Yamashiro. "If you read it more carefully, it affects all services that have been traditionally performed by civil service employees."

Yamashiro, Maui Mayor Linda Crockett Lingle and Kauai Mayor Maryanne Kusaka met separately with Senate President Norman Mizuguchi and House Speaker Joseph Souki yesterday "to alert them that it's a bigger problem for the state than for the counties," Lingle said.

Absent from the meetings was Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris, who sent Chief of Staff Ben Lee to sit in.

The high court's decision makes a point that the Legislature needs to make a clear policy on the contracting of state services out to private agencies, Lingle said.

For the state, the ruling could affect all its purchase-of-service contracts with the various private social service agencies, the transfer of inmates to Texas prisons and even the A+ after-school program, Yamashiro said.

"I need to go and discuss this with the attorney general a bit more and with members of my staff and get a better idea and a better interpretation of what the judges' decision would do," said Souki.

Contracting out many of the social services to private groups helps keep the costs of government down, he said.

Police/Fire


By Star-Bulletin staff

The 47-year-old man was booked on two counts of terroristic threatening.

Police were called to the 94-011 Farrington Hwy. apartment just before 3 p.m. after a caller reported the suspect had threatened two boys.

A 14-year-old and a 15-year-old who lived in the building had walked past the man's apartment earlier and allegedly heard the occupant swearing. The resident came out armed with a knife and at one point lunged at the youths before going back inside, police said. He apparently locked himself in the apartment before officers arrived.

SWAT officers entered the apartment at 10 p.m. and found him asleep.