The state's budget crisis continues to echo through the Capitol as the Senate prepares a budget that moves inmates to the mainland by closing a prison module, cuts the work year for school principals, and even includes a 3 percent pay cut for lawmakers, judges and state executives.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee also approved a bill that helps balance the budget, House Bill 2598, by chopping the hotel room tax given to the counties by nearly half, to $50 million from $94 million.

The bill now goes to the full Senate and then a conference committee meeting with the House.

Another part of the state budget is included in a bill, House Bill 2542, that scoops what it calls “;excess balances”; from 26 state special funds, totaling $45 million from next year's budget.

It would take money from special funds ranging from the Stadium Special Fund to the Tobacco Settlement Fund. In her version of the state budget, Gov. Linda Lingle called for raiding $10 million from the special funds.

In her speech to the committee yesterday, Sen. Donna Mercado Kim, chairwoman, took a dig at Lingle for the way the governor instituted the state worker layoffs used to balance her budget.

“;It has become apparent that it was executed with little deliberation. Yes, it appears that each department was simply given the number of positions to target with little or no regard to the amount that would be saved or whether the action was necessary,”; Kim said.

Kim (D, Kalihi Valley-Halawa) said she would overrule some of Lingle's “;sweeping, unreasoned actions”; by restoring positions for state agricultural inspectors and guards at the Hawaii State Hospital.

The Senate version of the budget does include a restoration of 12 of the 17 furloughs days planned for the next school year. The House has not yet made a decision on requests to end the furloughs by adding money to the budget because Lingle has said she would not spend the money.

Kim's committee pays for the furlough days with $32.5 million from the Hurricane Relief Fund and $33.5 million from the general fund—in other words, from the state treasury from where the Department of Education draws its money.

The education money will come, Kim said, “;from reflected savings the DOE will realize through re-prioritizing programs.”;

The end of Furlough Fridays would still need the agreement of both the state House and Lingle, who has said she opposed the plan.

A prison closing plan would be one of the most dramatic reversals in legislative policy, which has for the last five years supported moving Hawaii inmates back to Hawaii from mainland prisons.

But Kim said she could save $12.5 million by closing one module at Halawa correctional facility.

“;That's not something we wanted to do, but we could not ignore the fact that it costs us approximately $139 per day to house an inmate here while it costs only $74 a day on the mainland,”; Kim said.