Gov. George R. Ariyoshi will go before a special session of the Senate Ways and Means Committee Wednesday to defend his proposed two-year $3.4 billion budget.
The meeting, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Senate Conference Room 1, was arranged by Sen. Benjamin Cayetano, the committee chairman, after he met with Ariyoshi yesterday to discuss some of the concerns raised by the governor.
“We talked for a long time,” said Cayetano, D-4th Dist. (Leeward Oahu-North Shore), “and I told him that many of the senators want to meet with him personally because they have a lot of questions about his budget.”
As an example, Cayetano cited the recent actions by Sen. T.C. Yim, who as chairman of the Economic Development and Energy and Natural Resources Committee slashed $80 million from the governor’s budget for a world trade center at the Aloha Tower.
The proposed Aloha Tower world trade center development is one of Ariyoshi’s pet projects — one which he stressed during last year’s heated gubernatorial campaign as a way Hawaii can become a leader in the Pacific.
Yim, D-5th Dist. (West Honolulu), says private industry, rather than the state government, should shoulder the burden of developing such a center.
Yim has also said he is upset because Ariyoshi hasn’t allocated enough funds for aquaculture.
Another thing that bothers Yim is Ariyoshi’s selection of the Department of Land and Natural Resources and its new director Susumu Ono, his former administrative director, as the state agency which is expected to coordinate all of the governor’s economic, agriculture, aquaculture and “controlled growth” policies.
Cayetano disclosed yesterday that Ariyoshi met with him to determine the extent of the Senate’s dissatisfaction with his proposed budget.
“Understandably, his (Ariyoshi’s) department heads take a narrow view of the budget,” Cayetano said. “But we want to get the overall picture and find out what the governor is trying to do.
“In areas where we have doubts, the governor is going to have to do a hard selling job since this Senate is not going to be anyone’s rubber stamp.
“But I’m glad that he’s willing to come down to talk to us.”