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Editorials
Thursday, January 11, 2001Cayetano should
accept school budget
prioritiesThe issue: The governor's budget ignores some of the Department of Education's key requests.
CONFLICT is inevitable between the budget requests of a state government department and the governor's duty to balance state revenues and expenditures. This is particularly true when the Department of Education -- which gets by far the largest share of the state budget -- is involved. Nor does the fact that the department director answers to the elected Board of Education -- not the governor -- make for smooth relations.
Throw in a strong-willed governor like Ben Cayetano and an outspoken superintendent of schools like Paul LeMahieu and you can easily have a problem.
This year the Department of Education is requesting a budgetary increase of $164 million. Cayetano is recommending much less.
Moreover, Cayetano is proposing money for items that are not priorities in the DOE budget. Not only does the governor wants to spend considerably less on education than LeMahieu is requesting, but he wants to spend it on different programs.
For example, Cayetano wants to spend $27 million on computers. He proposes to spend nothing for LeMahieu's big innovation -- the introduction of standards as the basis of instruction -- which the superintendent considers vital in order to improve the performance of Hawaii's public school students.
The governor's budget also cuts sharply requested funding for health and safety initiatives, including night security and restroom supplies, and for compliance with legal mandates for gender equity in sports, English as a second language, Hawaiian language immersion and staffing for charter schools.
LeMahieu commented diplomatically, "The DOE appreciates the executive budget's initiatives in accelerating computer and textbook funding, and recognizes the unquestionable value of such items to student learning."
Then he added, "However, we are deeply concerned about a number of severely underfunded and unfunded DOE-priority items from the (Board of Education's) budget request."
The superintendent warned against investing resources "in personal initiatives...when in fact (this) is a system which badly needs investments in its foundation."
There will never be enough money to fulfill all the Department of Education's budget requests. But it is disturbing that the governor is ignoring the school system's priorities -- particularly the introduction of standards-based instruction -- to spend money for other purposes, even though they may be worthy.
The superintendent of education presumably has a strong grasp of the public schools' needs -- almost certainly a better understanding of those needs than the governor. After all, he is the person in direct charge of the system. And he has the professional training and experience needed to make these judgments. The governor doesn't.
Cayetano has the responsibility to limit government spending on education and all other programs to the state's financial capacity. But he should defer to the superintendent and the Board of Education in deciding how the DOE's funding allocation should be spent. To do otherwise is an abuse of power -- one the Legislature should correct.
War crimes surrender
NO greater faith in its ability to render justice could be shown the war crimes tribunal in the Hague than the surrender of a former president of the Bosnian Serb republic to stand trial for alleged atrocities. Biljana Plavsic, the former president, insists that she is innocent. Her willingness to face the charges could enhance her position before the court and put pressure on other indicted Bos-nian Serbs to turn themselves in.
Plavsic, 70, was a hard-line deputy of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and succeeded him as president after the 1995 Dayton peace accord.
She is to be tried alongside Momcilo Krajisnik, Karadzic's top wartime aide, on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the laws and customs of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions directed at Muslims in Bosnia. She is the first woman publicly indicted by the Hague tribunal for alleged war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
During the 1992-95 war, Plavsic supported the Bosnian Serb purges of other ethnic groups, at least once visiting troops in the front lines. She allegedly planned and ordered murders, defending "ethnic cleansing" as a "natural phenomenon." After the war, she won American support by shifting to a more moderate stance, accusing Bosnian Serb hard-liners of corruption.
Krajisnik was arrested last spring in a commando operation in the French zone of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In contrast, Plavsic flew from Bosnia to the Hague to turn herself in.
While Plavsic's surrender apparently involved no plea agreement, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says she understands Plavsic intends to cooperate with the war crimes tribunal. "She made the decision to do this," Albright said. "I am sure that it was an incredibly difficult decision and she was courageous to take it."
Plavsic's surrender is not likely to cause Karadzic and nearly 30 other at-large Serbs named in indictments to come forward soon. However, her cooperation could add significantly to information about the Bosnian atrocities, and her surrender could add pressure on others to eventually do the same.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
Frank Bridgewater, Acting Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
