Senators want $6 million
from hurricane relief fundThe $175 million Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund would be tapped to help islanders make their homes more resistant to hurricane damage under a proposal state senators are asking House members to support.
The two sides will meet tomorrow to decide where to get $6 million to fund a two-year pilot program approved last year providing grants of up to $2,100 for the homeowners who install wind-resistive devices, such as hurricane clips.
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The idea is that better-protected homes will reduce the losses when another hurricane hits the islands, as well as result in lower hurricane insurance premium costs in the meantime.
The first-come, first-served program would reimburse a single-family home owner up to 50 percent of the cost of installing clips to keep the roof tied to the walls and the walls tied to the foundation during hurricane-strength winds.
The House approved getting the $6 million from the interest generated from the $175 million hurricane relief fund, while the Senate wants to take the money directly from the fund, reducing its principal to $169 million.
Gov. Linda Lingle has been firm about not using any of the hurricane fund's principal to balance the state's general-fund operating budget, saying it needs to remain intact in the event another hurricane hits the islands.
Keeping the hurricane relief fund intact was a key promise in the campaign that led to her election last November, although she has since agreed to use the interest earned on the fund to help balance the budget.
The fund was established after Hurricane Iniki devastated Kauai in 1992, to provide hurricane insurance after private insurance companies suspended hurricane coverage and to attract those private insurers back into the Hawaii market.
"We believe it's a proper use of the corpus of the hurricane relief fund to mitigate hurricane damage," said Senate Ways and Means Chairman Brian Taniguchi (D, Moiliili-Manoa).
"If you do that, provide those matching grants to homeowners and they do the hurricane clips, then your liability should come down."
According to Taniguchi's committee report, it is estimated that every $1 spent on prevention would reduce hurricane losses by $6.
"Rather than have the entire balance of the (hurricane) fund lying fallow, it is in the State's best interest to preserve lives, reduce property damage and minimize disruption to the state's economy, business activity and public services by using some of these funds for pre-loss mitigation grants," the report said.
Having a hurricane mitigation program in place by Nov. 1, 2004, would make Hawaii eligible for 3-for-1 federal matching funds of up to $33 million to be used for other pre-hurricane mitigation programs in the islands, according to Gerald Peters, of the Hurricane Risk Mitigation Task Force, which has been lobbying for the funding.
After the Legislature approved the program last year, then-Gov. Ben Cayetano used his line-item veto to delete $2 million to provide the grants, for which only about 1,000 former Hawaii Hurricane Relief Fund policyholders were eligible.
Cayetano said the grants should be available to all homeowners because there did not appear to be a logical reason to limit them to former hurricane relief fund policyholders.
