Lingle has
bipartisan
goals in mind

Affordable housing, she says,
is a target on her agenda
that has public support

As she enters the second half of her term with fewer members of her party in the Legislature, Republican Gov. Linda Lingle says she plans to focus on initiatives that have broad support both in the Capitol and in communities.

In the days after last Tuesday's election -- when voters defeated the Lingle-led effort to have the GOP take control of the majority Democratic state House -- the governor said she plans to target affordable housing, economic development, transportation, early childhood education and the University of Hawaii.

"They'll be the kinds of things that, regardless of the balance in the Legislature, they'll be successful because they're things that the community would really like to see," Lingle said.

Although she has not specifically mentioned one of her main objectives -- to establish locally elected school boards in place of the current centralized system -- she added that her legislative package of proposals is far from being finished.

"I think as we make progress in so many areas, you then move to other issues," Lingle said last week.

Lingle said she expects to have a clearer picture of her proposals for 2005 by the time she delivers her State of the State address in January.

Meanwhile, Democrats, who gained five seats in the House and maintained their numbers in the Senate on Election Day, now hold a 4-to-1 advantage over Republicans in the Legislature -- enough to override any vetoes Lingle might hand them.

In the last two years, majority Democrats have overridden 13 of the governor's vetoes.

"Veto overrides have not been taken lightly," Senate President Robert Bunda (D, Kaena-Wahiawa-Pupukea) said in an e-mail last week. "We have overridden vetoes only on issues that we feel are vital to Hawaii's future: public education, public health, aid to the needy and drug abuse."

As the Jan. 19 start of the 2005 session approaches, Democrats say they are willing to work with the administration and with their colleagues across the aisle for the benefit of the state.

Some of the things Democrats plan to push in 2005 include further improvement of public education as well as affordable housing for the homeless, Bunda said. Although Democrats could seize the opportunity and pass whatever legislation they want, at least one political analyst does not expect that to happen.

"The Democrats aren't great seizers," said University of Hawaii political scientist Neal Milner. "Just because they did better in the legislative election then most people thought they would doesn't mean they're going to be a more well-organized legislative machine.

"There is nothing obvious right now to me on the horizon that is a large-scale issue -- a large-scale Democratic issue -- that these folks will all coalesce around. It may happen but there's nothing that obvious."