At least 4 vetoes
set for overrideThe bills provide funding
for hospitals and social services
and a Maui air ambulance
State legislators will meet in special session today after Democratic leaders announced that they have the votes to override at least four bills vetoed by Republican Gov. Linda Lingle.
Lawmakers will take up bills that would restore $3.6 million from the state rainy-day fund to pay for social service agencies and hospitals, allow the legislative auditor to charge state agencies for financial audits, discourage so-called "gentlemen's farms" on agricultural-zoned lands and provide funding for air ambulance service for Maui County.
Legislature Directory
Legislature Bills & Hawaii Revised Statutes
Democrats said yesterday they have the needed two-thirds vote to override the four vetoes, and one Democratic leader vowed to also push for an override of Lingle's rejection of a mandatory binding arbitration bill.
The Hawaii Government Employees Association has been lobbying legislators for that override.
In Japan, where the governor is on a trip to promote tourism to the islands, Lingle told the Associated Press that she is not losing any sleep by the political actions back home.
Lingle arrived in Tokyo this week for a media blitz to reverse double-digit declines in visitors from Japan, leaving behind the political fight over the vetoed bills.
"The reason I didn't cancel my trip is, I wanted to focus on what the people of Hawaii care about," she said, noting that promoting the state's tourism-dependent economy was a priority.
Lingle dismissed the announcement of the special session as petty politics by Democratic leaders.
"It is part of the process, and it's their right to do it but it's clearly political," Lingle said. "We are simply doing the fiscally responsible thing."
Lawmakers, however, said the vetoes would have "a devastating effect on health and social services."
"Our focus will be on bills that have a significant impact on public safety, health and welfare," Senate President Robert Bunda (D, Wahiawa-Pupukea) said. "We will keep farmlands for food production and not gated estates for wealthy landowners."
Bunda accused Lingle of making decisions "based on public relations rather than good public policy."
He noted Lingle's announcement Saturday that she was restoring $400,000 in funding cut from Kahuku Hospital after learning the facility faced a fourfold increase in its malpractice insurance premium.
Bunda said because Lingle has signed the bill containing her line-item vetoes, the Legislature has to override her veto of that bill to restore the Kahuku Hospital funding.
Republicans lawmakers, meanwhile, blasted the impending overrides, calling the Democrats' action "a show of partisan politics."
"It is completely irresponsible for the House and Senate to come back here to spend more money when we clearly do not have more money," said Rep. Galen Fox (R, Waikiki-Ala Moana), House GOP leader.
Lingle had waged a high-profile campaign to defend her vetoes. She even appeared on a 30-minute prime-time television broadcast to highlight the state's budget problems.
"It's also stupid because all the overrides they do that relate to money, the governor simply doesn't have to spend it," Fox said.
HGEA lobbyists gave House and Senate leaders petitions with 7,500 signatures, urging them to override the veto of Senate Bill 768, which would use binding arbitration instead of strikes to resolve labor differences between government and public workers unions.
The HGEA argued that allowing public employees to go on strike would damage the state, but state and county officials have said that leaving the negotiations up to a neutral arbitrator results in excessive pay raises for public workers.
The bill reversed what had been hailed as a major piece of civil service reform enacted during the administration of former Gov. Ben Cayetano. Supporters said with the threat of a strike to labor negotiations, workers and management both had to bargain fairly.
"Not having the safety net of binding arbitration forces both sides to get serious, stay focused and negotiate in good faith. It also forces them to be accountable for positions taken and for end results," Lingle said in her veto message.
House Democrats, led by Rep. Joe Souki (D, Waihee-Wailuku), the former House speaker, had asked that the Senate also consider overriding Lingle's veto of the binding arbitration bill.
The bill passed the Senate 19-6, with Sen. Colleen Hanabusa joining the five Republicans in casting the only no votes. The House voted 38-13, with 13 of the 15 Republicans registering the only no votes.
At a state Capitol news conference late yesterday, House Speaker Calvin Say (D, Palolo-Kaimuki) said he would continue lobbying to get the Senate to approve the binding arbitration override.
"It is going to take us some time. Maybe by tomorrow (Tuesday) morning, we will see if we have the required votes," Say said.
Bunda gave the HGEA bill a 50-50 chance.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BACK TO TOP |
Lingle’s aides
defend her vetoes
Gov. Linda Lingle may be in Japan, but her administration carries on the fight at home against today's possible legislative veto overrides.
A few key Lingle Cabinet members have spent the last week fending off criticism of Lingle's 50 vetoes by writing detailed rebuttals that have appeared as opinion pieces in newspapers and online news sites.
The Legislature will attempt to override at least four bills vetoed by Lingle on June 20.
One of them, Senate Bill 255, CD1, banned private restrictions on agricultural land to address the growing use of such lands for residential lots, gentleman farmer estates and gated communities.
House and Senate leaders said yesterday they are being inundated with calls from farmers angry the governor did not keep farmland for only agricultural uses.
But state Agricultural Chairwoman Sandra Lee Kunimoto described the bill as broad and likely to produce unintended negative consequences. Not all restrictions on agricultural uses are bad, she said, and the bill could be amended to focus on the problem of encroaching residential development.
"The fact that we need legislation to assure that agricultural activities can take place on lands designated for agriculture is a serious symptom of a deeper problem," Kunimoto wrote.
Lingle, a former two-term Maui County mayor, said the state could not afford the $1 million for emergency helicopter services for Maui found in Senate Bill 745 CD1, another of the vetoed bills being considered for override today.
The governor objected to it because it requires the state Health Department to set up a statewide helicopter ambulance service without the funding for it.
The state could be open to liability if such services were not available to a person who needed them in another county besides Maui, she said.
"Nobody disagrees these are tight money times, but the human needs of our people, our state, must be heard and must be our first priority," House Speaker Calvin Say (D, Palolo) said yesterday.
Another vetoed bill allows the state auditor to be reimbursed for all or part of the costs of a financial audit of a state agency. Russ Saito, state comptroller, and Randy Roth, Lingle's senior policy advisor, have said in separate opinion pieces that the measure is wasteful and would increase bureaucracy and costs.
"Gov. Lingle exercised her veto power this year because the audit bill was poorly conceived and poorly drafted," Roth wrote. "Gov. Cayetano vetoed a similar bill last year for basically the same reasons."
The fourth measure has raised some questions because it dealt with $3.6 million in line-item vetoes from a bill Lingle signed into law June 26. Senate Bill 1305, CD1, now known as Act 215 of 2003, originally used $7.2 million from the state's Emergency and Budget Reserve Fund for 20 health and social services programs.
The governor cut that amount in half before signing the bill, saying the cuts were to new, newly expanded or duplicative programs.
Chiyome Fukino, state health director, and Lillian Koller, state human services director, said in a joint editorial the safety net in Hawaii is wider and stronger than in just about any state, despite the governor's vetoes.
Even so, the Lingle administration recently announced the restoration of $750,000 for three of those line-item vetoes.
Two of them were improper because they dealt with Judiciary expenditures. The third -- an additional $400,000 for Kahuku Hospital -- was restored after Lingle learned about a fourfold increase in the hospital's malpractice insurance premium.
