Big Isle sees
$8.1 million in red ink

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By Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.com

HILO >> Leery of raising taxes to cover a Hawaii County budget shortfall, County Council members are proposing alternatives like cutting workers' pay and selling county land.

Mayor Harry Kim laid out a $202.8 million budget proposal this week for fiscal 2003, starting July 1. Since the county tax revenues will be $8.1 million short of that, either taxes must be raised or workers laid off, he said.

Kim said he preferred to raise taxes, but proposed no specifics.

Laying off workers probably will not work, said Councilwoman Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd. Workers have so many benefits due them that the county would continue paying them for nearly a year after they leave, she said.

She said the county should negotiate pay cuts. Previously, state law linked all counties and the state into the same pay package, but a change of the law last year would let Hawaii County make its own deal, she said.

Leithead-Todd noted that the ILWU and other unions have accepted pay cuts in the past to save jobs.

Councilman Dominic Yagong proposed selling up to three-fourths of the county's 4,400 acres in Hamakua.

Yagong argued in the past for keeping the land for small farms, but nothing ever came of that, and the land is overgrown with weeds.

Leithead-Todd said she would consider raising taxes.

To nudge Council members who refuse think along those lines, she proposed money-saving alternatives like getting rid of two county bands, closing swimming pools and ending police drug-education programs.