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Education, Gov. Ben Cayetano's proposed state budget for the 2001-2002 fiscal year is 8 percent higher than the budget for this fiscal year.
construction are
highest priorities in
gov’s budget proposal
Included is a detailed plan
Cayetano won't budge on raises
for the wholesale redevelopment
of Kakaako makai of Ala Moana
Felix case to cost $300 milBy Richard Borreca
Star-BulletinDriving the new budget is a 4.8 percent increase in education and health costs required to meet federal court orders.
Cayetano also wants a dramatic two-year, $1 billion construction budget. It will pour $411.8 million into fixing public schools, libraries and the University of Hawaii.
"You either make the improvements or you don't," Cayetano said in a meeting yesterday with Honolulu Star-Bulletin editors and reporters.
"In past state budgets, the state wouldn't spend more than $400 million" for the capital improvements, he said. "That thinking is outmoded."
Included in his proposal that he will send to the state Legislature in January is a detailed plan for the wholesale redevelopment of Kakaako, makai of Ala Moana Boulevard.
Cayetano wants to move the John A. Burns School of Medicine from the University of Hawaii campus and remake it in Kakaako as a school of medicine and biomedical research.
He also wants to use state land in Kakaako to build a science and technology center in conjunction with the Bishop Museum, adding that Hawaii's major museum is interested in the deal because it is discussing selling portions of its Kalihi facility to Kamehameha Schools.
Cayetano also is continuing his push for a world-class aquarium at the Kakaako parcel at the Ewa tip of the Kewalo Channel.
The governor's administrative director, Sam Callejo, said the state hopes to break ground for the aquarium before Cayetano leaves office in December of 2002.
Both parts of Cayetano's budget -- operating and construction -- stress education, with the plans for relocating and renaming the UH medical school probably the most ambitious.
He said programs in the Department of Education, University of Hawaii, Department of Human Services, and Budget and Finance represent 85 percent of the entire state budget. "We are spending almost 50 percent of the entire state budget for education," he said.
Last year, the Legislature approved funds for UH to study building a medical school downtown, but Cayetano said the site, next to Queen's Hospital, was too small and too political because it appeared to be in competition with Queen's.
The 10.5-acre Kakaako site, however, is "perceived as being neutral," Cayetano said, and is large enough to be built in phases.
Kenneth Mortimer, UH president, and Dr. Edwin Cadman, medical school dean, have said that the present biomedical science center built in 1971 on the Manoa campus is too outdated and small for a growing medical school.
Besides, Cayetano said yesterday, the new facility would include teams of researchers with private and federal grants using portions of the new center. He said Cadman calculates that the research development could be worth $36 million in new investments and 1,500 new permanent jobs.
"We want to diversify the economy," Cayetano said. "I've been pushing high tech, but I want to leave no stone unturned."
The operating budget proposed by Cayetano for the fiscal year beginning July 1 does not include pay raises for state workers, and because of the increased spending shows the state's surplus dropping from $272 million this year to only $9.6 million by fiscal year 2003.
But as the local economy continues to improve, the state surplus would climb to $641 million by fiscal year 2006, the governor said.
Figuring state worker demands would drive the state nearly a billion dollars into the hole by fiscal year 2005, Gov. Ben Cayetano said the state can offer no more than a 9 percent raise, spread over the last two years of a four-year contract. Gov won't budge
on state pay raisesBy Richard Borreca
Star-BulletinCayetano rejected both the Hawaii Government Employees Association arbitrated award of nearly 15 percent and the even larger demands by the other state unions.
While Cayetano said he's holding firm on state pay raises, the unions are positioning themselves for a strike sometime this spring.
The blue-collar United Public Workers has already taken a strike vote, while the Hawaii State Teachers Association and the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly have reached an impasse in their negotiations and will be able to strike in the spring.
The HGEA is forbidden from striking because it agreed to mandatory arbitration, but the state administration is refusing to pay the arbitrated award.
Randy Perreira, deputy executive director of the HGEA, said the arbitrator was able to see how much money the state had and decided that it could afford the raises.
However, Cayetano said if all the unions took the same award proposed for the HGEA, the state would have a $305 million debt by fiscal year 2003.
The HSTA says the raises are needed to improve public education.
"We understand the governor's concern about the money, but he has a crisis in public education and that's the crisis we are trying to deal with," said Joan Husted, HSTA's chief negotiator.
Cayetano's own wage offering would also tip the budget balance. Without a $250 million cut in the next budget, the state would be in debt by fiscal year 2003.
Cayetano warned that the state has already looked for all the excess money in the budget and the Legislature has even taken the excess money earned by the Employee Retirement Fund for past budget increases.
It will cost the state more than $300 million over the next three years to comply with court-mandated improvements to special education services in the public schools, according to budget figures provided by Gov. Ben Cayetano. Felix price tag
put at $300 millionCayetano says the cost of
the court-ordered services leaves
schools very little wiggle roomBy Crystal Kua
Star-Bulletin"I'm not happy because I think they can do it better," Cayetano said yesterday of the price tag. "I don't have control over the Department of Education. It's really hard to get control over that whole thing, but we're doing better than before."
During a budget presentation for Star-Bulletin editors and reporters, Cayetano and state Budget Director Neal Miyahira said that price tag to meet the mandates of the federal Felix consent decree includes:
Those numbers mean that there isn't much left for other things the public school system wants.Emergency costs of $107 million to cover mandates for the current fiscal year which ends June 30.
"(Felix) is a major competitor for new money," said Joan Husted, deputy executive director of the Hawaii State Teachers Association.
The state is under federal court order to improve educational and mental health services for special needs students in the public schools as part of a lawsuit filed for Jennifer Felix. The lawsuit said that the state violated federal laws by not providing adequate services to children needing special assistance.
The state now has until the end of next year for the public school system to be in compliance with the law.
U.S. District Judge David Ezra gave the state health director and the superintendent of schools powers to override personnel policies and procedures, civil service regulations and other state rules, regulations and procedures that may obstruct or delay the state's compliance efforts.
The $107 million emergency appropriation for Felix will make up the bulk of the governor's $133.4 million emergency funding requests.
"About half of the (emergency) Felix money is due to the judge's contempt order," Miyahira said. "The balance has to do with shortfalls that the Department of Health is experiencing in running its current operations. The level of services that they were anticipating is a lot higher than what they were budgeted."
The Felix-related costs will continue to mount in the next two fiscal years.
Husted said that while the union, which represents 12,000 public schoolteachers, has been critical of one of the Felix mandates -- a contract to hire a firm to recruit special education teachers from the mainland -- the department has had to follow the requirements set out by the court despite the costs.
"Some of what the DOE is being asked to do is not a choice," she said. But she noted that the funds should be scrutinized more by seeing that the bulk of the money is being spent directly on school-level services.
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