House rightly exercising fiscal restraint

Something strange is going on at the state Capitol, especially in the House chambers.

The opposing political parties are communicating with each other, at least a little bit, with members of the Republican minority caucus actually managing to sponsor active bills and serve in vice chairmanship roles.

The leaders who are supposed to be tracking the state’s finances seem to be concentrating on that, leaving those chairing other committees to focus on their subject areas — a softening of the conventional top-down leadership approach.

And, perhaps most encouraging, the House is demanding clearer justification of expenditures. Even as a more optimistic forecast has emerged from the state Council on Revenues and belts may loosen a notch, that kind of accountability needs to be maintained.

House Speaker Joseph Souki and several members of House leadership met last week with members of the Star-Advertiser editorial board. The purpose was to give their view of the current budget discussions. Ultimately these will involve members of both the House and Senate as well as officials of the executive branch, but producing a balanced budget that can be enacted remains the principal responsibility of the Legislature’s lower chamber.

Finding the precarious balance of holding the line on taxation and spending while financing community demands, some of which were curtailed during the recession, is the perennial challenge.

At the very least, it’s good to see that budgetary requests are getting fully vetted. Rep. Sylvia Luke, who chairs the House Finance Committee, said that in the first workup of the budget, departments were told that positions that were chronically unfilled would be deleted, unless and until some basis for keeping them on the books could be demonstrated. This will force better fiscal planning and accountability, which makes the management of taxpayer funds more transparent to the public.

For example, Luke added, it’s been fairly common practice in department management to hold vacant positions in reserve as a means of having funds for vacation payouts — settlements given to employees who retire without using their alloted vacation. Those who hold the state’s pursestrings can fully understand the need to make these payouts, she said, but it would be better to make this a distinct budgetary line item.

Here are a few other points on which the House has adopted defensible positions:

» Increases in the minimum wage would be made more gradually, in the interest of minimizing the burden on businesses.

» Personal income taxes would be cut, which also could benefit small businesses such as sole proprietorships in which taxes are filed at the individual rate.

» The Department of Education requests for new programs, such as investments in digital equipment, should be downsized or stretched out over a longer budgetary horizon. The state needs to be certain that all schools have the infrastructure, such as Web connectivity, to make these expenditures sensible.

The House leadership also seems hesitant about the move toward universal preschool favored by Gov. Neil Abercrombie, with Souki stating that the K-12 system needs to be fixed first.

While it’s rational to worry that the state won’t have the funding for broadly subsidizing preschool as quickly as the administration hopes, it’s also wrong to see early education entirely as a separate add-on. The stronger argument is that enabling more students to be academically ready to learn upon entering kindergarten would be part of the solution to improving performance in the public schools.

But many would also acknowledge that a go-slow approach would be wise. Appropriating money for planning would be sensible at this stage, especially with some constitutional impediments — the existing prohibition on spending state money on private education — still to be resolved.

Overall, however, the first half of the budget-making efforts by the new House leadership shows a measure of restraint that should be applauded — and amplified.

Could the Senate pick up a few tips here?

We can only hope to see that happen.