Lawmakers need more
time on budget

House Speaker Souki looks to Wednesday
for a possible wrap-up

By Mike Yuen
Star-Bulletin

With key budget differences still unresolved, it appears legislators will need a third extension -- and perhaps more -- to finish their work.

That assessment, shared by Gov. Ben Cayetano and House Speaker Joe Souki (D, Wailuku), has led Souki to say that Wednesday now seems to be the earliest that lawmakers can adjourn.

The snail's pace of budget negotiations, which began 15 days ago, was revealed last night and early this morning during one of the few public meetings of the budget conference committee.

House Finance Chairman Calvin Say (D, Palolo), who has been having extended private negotiations with his Senate counterparts, said conferees have not completed their work on major program areas. "It's been very tedious," he said.

Although Senate Ways and Means Co-Chairwoman Carol Fukunaga (D, Makiki) stressed the positive, saying she's "been encouraged by steady progress," much of the Department of Education's budget, for example, was in limbo.

Nor did the House and Senate show any movement in settling their differences on state funding for complying with a federal order to provide additional health and educational services for special-needs students in the public schools.

The Senate initially wanted to slash $23 million from the budgets of the Health and Education budgets that the House and Cayetano believe are necessary for compliance with the Felix consent decree. Now it is willing to provide only $9.6 million -- all to Health and none to Education.

Senate Ways and Means Co-chairwoman Rosalyn Baker (D, Lahaina) said her chamber is concerned that the state would be providing excessive funding when the number of students needing assistance is leveling off at 6,500.

Say countered with a memo from Health Director Lawrence Miike saying that the Senate's cuts would mean his department would run out of funds for Felix compliance on Dec. 31, after only six months.

But Baker continued to express her doubts, saying that could not be the case unless funds were "totally mismanaged."

Miike, who was in the audience, shook his head in disagreement.

Afterward, Miike said, "She's saying that on the erroneous assumption that our kids have leveled off and we're asking for more money. We're not mismanaging."

Prior to sitting in on budget negotiations, Souki said, "It will be a miracle if we can adjourn on Monday."

Lawmakers were supposed to go home three days ago. But Cayetano extended the session to Wednesday and then to Monday.

Cayetano said as long as there is some progress, he is willing to grant additional extensions.

But further extensions could conflict with the Republican state convention, which begins a week from today. The Democratic state convention starts May 22.

Each additional day of the legislative session costs a total of $2,230, which includes an $80 per diem for neighbor island lawmakers and $10 for Oahu legislators. But the extra cost won't be a burden on taxpayers since the funds come out of the Legislature's existing budget, Souki said.

Work on the budget has also stalled negotiations on other budget-related bills, such as tax reform and the state's hotel room tax.

House and Senate conferees need to produce a solid tax relief plan, said Cayetano, who is now floating a new tax reform initiative after his first, which included a general excise tax increase, was jettisoned during conference negotiations.

"The expectations have been built up. The people expect some tax reform," Cayetano said. "Then again, it could boil down to a couple of people in key positions; we need to get those folks to understand the bigger picture."

Faced with Senate intransigence, the House abandoned its Cayetano-backed plan for raising the general excise tax from 4.0 percent to 4.5 percent as part of an initiative to cut income tax rates as much as 35 percent. Cayetano is now pushing a plan that he labels as "bold" that would slash personal income tax rates 25 percent in three years without a tax increase.

Cayetano said yesterday that preliminary tax revenue figures for April shows that collections were $40 million ahead of collections for April 1997.

For the first 10 months of this fiscal year, tax revenues are 2 percent ahead of what was collected in the same, year-earlier period, Cayetano said. That compares favorably with the Council on Revenues forecast that collections would be up 1.2 percent this year.

"It's a good sign," he said.

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Secret sessions
challenged as violation
of Constitution

By Ian Lind
Star-Bulletin

Secret bargaining sessions between leaders of House and Senate money committees may violate open meeting requirements of the state Constitution, says attorney Tom Grande.

"If you read the Constitution, it's pretty clear," Grande said.

A 1978 amendment to the Constitution requires every committee meeting to be open to the public if the meeting is held "for the purpose of making decisions on matters referred to the committee." The requirement applies to standing committees as well as conference committees, which include members from both House and Senate.

The Legislature's internal rules also call for public meetings, but this didn't stop House and Senate leaders from working out their differences in private this year, as they have in the past.

Shirley Cavanaugh, a spokeswoman for Senate President Norman Mizuguchi, said he was consulting with staff attorneys before replying.

Robin Matsunaga, chief of staff for House Speaker Joe Souki, said questions come up every year, and committee chairmen are advised to comply with open meeting requirements before beginning conference negotiations.

Matsunaga said he was "not aware" of whether closed-door meetings have taken place or, if so, whether the the matters discussed would be considered violations.

"I will remind them that they can't be making decisions in closed-door meetings. That wouldn't be consistent with the requirements," Matsunaga said. "They should be complying with the open meeting requirements."

Grande filed a 1981 lawsuit against the Legislature after being tossed out of a closed budget bargaining session during that year's session, and says another challenge is long overdue.

"I don't propose litigation for litigation's sake, but this is a problem that has been going on for 20 years," he said.

Grande, then executive director of Common Cause, argued in 1981 that closed budget meetings deprived him of the constitutional right of access to the legislative process.

The case was declared moot and thrown out of court because the budget bill being discussed in the closed meeting was vetoed by the governor, and a new budget adopted in special session.

"Whether the Legislature might in the future violate the constitutional provision relating to open decision-making meetings is purely speculative at this time," said Judge Toshimi Sodetani's decision, apparently leaving the door open for another suit if violations continued.

Media attorney Jeff Portnoy, a strong backer of open government, is less certain that a legal challenge would succeed.

"There has certainly been a perversion of the spirit of the Constitution," Portnoy said.

"Where was the public debate in the last 72 hours regarding the House decision to give up on the excise tax increase?

"All the important decisions about the budget were made behind closed doors with no public debate, no public discussion."

Portnoy said he was not confident that a court uphold a challenge if confidential discussions were limited to informal conversations between various members of the two committees.

"But I think there's a serious legal issue if there are designated subcommittees appointed officially or unofficially to negotiate for either side, rather than just ad hoc discussions among different committee members," Portnoy said.

Apart from legal arguments, however, legislative observers say secrecy leads to increased public cynicism.

Alan Murakami, an attorney active in the Community Revitalization Coalition, a group of 45 community organizations, said people "feel they've gone into a phase of total darkness."

"It's been hard to get information, so the public is discouraged from finding out what's going on and participating in government. It's really bad," Murakami said.

"Even senators are complaining that they can't get information from the Finance and Ways and Means committees," Murakami said. "It's just an incredible way to do business, given the stakes."

Frank Chong, director of the Waikiki Health Center and author of an annual legislative guidebook, believes some of the secrecy stems from disorganization in the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

Chong pointed to a series of changes in committee leadership, and high turnover among committee staff.

"The secrecy is partly because senators are embarrassed at how badly organized they are.

"They are so disorganized that there's no way they can answer any questions about the budget."

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Workers comp reform
bill stalled

Legislators will meet today to try to
work out differences between the House
and Senate on what should be covered

By Craig Gima
Star-Bulletin

A prison guard who was accused of having sex with female inmates is appealing a decision to deny him workers compensation payments for the stress the investigation caused him.

Wayne Salangsang is one of 13 state workers whose stress-related workers compensation cases resulting from personnel actions were settled or are pending before the Labor and Industrial Relations Appeals Board.

The final decision or settlement in the cases could be affected by a bill stalled in conference committee at the state Legislature.

The bill would tackle issues brought up by the state Supreme Court's Mitchell decision that awarded workers compensation to a teacher who suffered stress when she learned she would be disciplined for striking a student.

Last week, a federal judge dismissed a civil rights lawsuit filed by the women against Salangsang because they failed to appear and prosecute their case.

At the time, he denied having sex with the women and said he was ridiculed and lost friends because of the allegations.

He also said he was under a doctor's care and is on sick leave without pay because of stress.

In a memo to legislators, the attorney general's office also detailed other stress cases filed because of personnel actions.

They include:

A woman who claimed stress because her supervisor at a juvenile detention facility talked to her about falling asleep on the job. The supervisor did not write her up, but wanted to caution her about the potential dangers of such action.

A man who claimed stress because of a job promotion.

A man who filed for compensation because of stress when the Internal Revenue Service garnished his wages.

A teacher who claimed stress because his principal talked to him about an anonymous complaint. He also complained about the way the school secretary handled his request for leave without pay.

A case involving a man who argued with a supervisor over a job assignment and did not return to work was one of three settled by the state because of the Mitchell decision.

Winston Tawata, workers compensation administrator for the Department of Education, said stress-related workers compensation cases resulting from personnel actions have cost the department $200,000 in wage loss benefits, medical benefits, investigation and legal work this fiscal year.

He said since the Mitchell decision, 10 new claims have been filed for stress resulting from personnel actions.

"As long as we are acting in good faith, it shouldn't be compensable because we as administrators or supervisors will be afraid to discipline anybody," he said.

James Takushi, the director of the state department of Human Resources Development, said it is vital that the Legislature pass a bill to address the Supreme Court's decision.

"Since the Mitchell decision, I think we've had about 25 or 30 stress cases that we thought we won or think we can win but we may have to rethink our decision," he said.

The House and Senate agree something needs to be done about stress-related workers compensation claims, but disagree on what cases should be covered and the standard of proof to deny compensation.

The Senate bill would only deny claims because of discipline.

House negotiators say many of the workers compensation claims in the attorney general's memo would still be allowed unless the broader language of "other personnel actions" is included in the bill.

At an earlier conference committee meeting, Senate Human Resources Co-Chairman Brian Kanno (D, Makakilo) expressed concern that the broader House language could exclude legitimate stress claims.

A meeting to resolve the differences between the two versions of the bill was scheduled for this afternoon.

If the two sides do not reach an agreement, the bill may die.