Council prepares
to override vetoesLegal opinions differ on
whether members still have
the right to reinstate budget items
The City Council, defying a legal opinion by city attorneys, appears ready to override Mayor Jeremy Harris's vetoes of city budget items.
"We're proceeding as the law states, as the Charter states," Council Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz said.
But the city Corporation Counsel's Office said in a June 30 memo that if the Council failed to override the vetoed budget items by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, the budget along with the vetoed items would take effect and become law.
Dela Cruz and Council attorneys disagree. They said the mayor's June 21 line-item vetoes mean that the Charter gives the Council 30 days, or until July 21, to override vetoes.
The Office of Council Services, the research and legal arm of the Council, is in the process of writing an opinion saying the Council still has time to override the vetoes, Dela Cruz said. "They verbally told us that already."
Dela Cruz said a decision will be made by tomorrow -- the deadline to post the agenda for the July 14 Council meeting -- on which vetoes the Council will reject. "I'm in the process of talking to members," he said.
Harris has vetoed several budget provisos, including one that would allot $240,000 to the Kaimuki trolley and one that would rule out the lowest bidder, Island Recycling Inc., in the contract for the city's curbside recycling program.
Harris also nixed $703,000 from the Council's operating budget that could affect the televising of Council meetings and the planning of a national conference.
Dela Cruz's staff said the Council override of a budget bill veto after the start of the fiscal year has been done successfully before in 1979.
"We're working within the framework of the Charter," Dela Cruz said.
Dela Cruz said the City Clerk's Office has certified all but the vetoed portions of the budgets, which means that all but the vetoed sections of the city's operating, capital improvement and legislative budgets can be implemented. The certification reads, "A vetoed item or items portion or portions thereof reconsidered and successfully passed shall take effect upon successful passage."
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