If you are dealing with more than $12 billion, what happens with $33.5 million may not make much difference unless you are the one presented with the multimillion-dollar tab.

That’s what’s up with the latest version of the $12.1 billion state budget passed Wednesday by the state House.

There is much interest in how state Rep. Sylvia Luke steered the bill, House Bill 1700, through her Finance Committee because there were some major policy shifts tucked into the 315-page document. First is the repeated declaration by Luke that a good budget is one that has been cut.

The big haircut was administered by the Council on Revenues, which said the state is not growing anywhere as fast as the Council thought it would back in 2013 and lowered its expectations.

That meant taking $180 million out of expected tax earnings.

"If we had done everything the governor wanted, the carry-over balance would go down to $99 million," said Luke in an interview, noting that her committee had cut $53 million out of Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s proposed budget before the Council on Revenues’ meat ax fell.

"These cuts to the executive budget continue the House trend of responsibly reducing the governor’s budget. At this point last year, the House had reduced the governor’s budget by almost $600 million," said House GOP leader Rep. Aaron Ling Johanson during floor debate on the budget.

While Luke and her coalition crew were taking away, they were also giving.

They essentially agreed with Abercrombie and gave the University of Hawaii professors their pay raises and restored salary cuts without forcing the UH to raise tuition to pay for it. That was a $33.5 million policy switch.

"UH was planning to use tuition money to pay for salaries because the Legislature was pressuring them to address the repair and maintenance backlog. They wanted to pay the salaries with general funds," explained Luke.

Previously, the Legislature had said UH autonomy meant it would have to put on the big-boy pants and raise its own money.

The plan now frees UH to use its own money to start work on the $500 million repair and maintenance backlog. And the UH’s Big Island campus would get the needed money to finish its School of Pharmacy, although there is a caveat that the state money is really a loan and the state expects that UH will pay it back.

Before the deal is reported to the credit bureau, note that even Luke adds that expecting the UH to repay the building money is based on good faith between all parties.

On another note, the House takes an interesting tack on urban development and state planning by reviving former Gov. John Waihee’s idea to build a new state office building in Chinatown next to the senior citizen center.

The thinking is that the state now spends $11 million a year to lease space for state agencies and already owns land that could go for a new state office building. It would be called the Liliha Civic Center and the budget puts $15 million in for design and planning.

"It could potentially house a lot of departments, if we cleaned up the areas and centralized some of the departments," Luke said.

Even Luke acknowledges "this may not be the exciting stuff," but when your whopping $844 million surplus just got kicked in both knees, no new surprises is a good course.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.