Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
State: Pay raises Public employee pay raises could take a projected $1.1 billion surplus in 2005 to a $305 million deficit, according to figures released by the state budget office.
may create deficit
But the Senate Ways and
Means Committee wants more
information before it accepts
the assessmentBy Richard Borreca
Star-BulletinNeal Miyahira, director of finance, told the Senate Ways and Means Committee yesterday that new projections show the state to be in good fiscal health, despite additional costs.
But the budget goes from black to red if projected Hawaii Government Employees Association pay raises of 8.7 percent and 5.7 percent in the last two years of its four-year contract are calculated and if all other employees are given the same pay increase.
Although the HGEA was awarded the raises by an arbitration panel earlier this year, the Legislature didn't fund it. Gov. Cayetano has repeatedly said the state can't afford to give all state employees a raise as large as the one HGEA won. And Cayetano says it isn't fair to give some state workers a smaller pay raise than others.
The cost would be an extra $116.5 million in fiscal year 2002, when the state is expecting a surplus of $71.1 million, Miyahira said. He said the expected deficit would be $305.5 million in fiscal year 2005.
"You are looking at annual deficits and an ending general fund balance deeply in the red," he said.
Committee co-chairmen Sen. Carol Fukunaga and Andy Levin stopped short of disagreeing with Miyahira's assessment, saying they wanted more information before they agreed with the state's prediction. "We are having the staff go over the figures with a fine-tooth comb," Fukunaga said.
"We are concerned that a lot of the numbers keep changing. We have seen a lot of changes in the last few months," she said.
Fukunaga and Levin said it was too early to say that a public employee pay raise was too much for the state to afford. Instead, they said the state may be calculating other expenditures to make the overall state budget larger than it should be.
J.N. Musto, executive director of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, said he couldn't figure out Miyahira's math.
"I guess it is just convenient that we go from a surplus to a deficit, because of the public unions," Musto said.
In his presentation, Miyahira said new costs are continuing to come in.
For instance, the state expects to spend at least $14 million for the state convention center and an additional $64 million for court-ordered special-education treatment for children in the state.
Miyahira warned that the court costs are expected to rise dramatically as the state rushes to put another 500 education and mental health experts on the payroll.
He said the state plans to spend $7 million more just to buy, outfit and install trailers to handle the extra 500 workers at various schools across the state.
Other federal judgments against the state call for increased mental health support for both children and adults. Increased costs will be $13.8 million in fiscal year 2002.
In addition, extra costs to house and care for Hawaii prisoners in leased space in mainland prisons is expected to rise to $52 a day per prisoner from $42.
eHawaiiGov.com
www.hawaii.gov
Legislature Directory
Legislature Bills & Hawaii Revised Statutes
