When hopes and dreams meet budgetary reality

When Hawaii’s budget crashes, the pain is obvious. Now with the state’s balanced budget, many are still not getting relief.

During the Great Recession years at the end of Gov. Linda Lingle’s second term and the beginning of Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s one term, the state budget was rescued only because savings were thrown at the deficit and then taxes were raised to halt the sinking.

Today the state is upright and sailing straight.

It is reporting a carryover balance around $500 million, according to Rep. Sylvia Luke, House Finance Committee chairwoman.

At the same time, though, nobody in state government is getting what they want.

On Kauai last week, Gov. David Ige, in his first formal speech on the island as governor, essentially repeated his January State of the State speech saying the state checkbook is in trouble.

That has been Ige’s single message since becoming governor.

"We have fully committed our current funds to existing programs and services and we are spending more than we are taking in," Ige said both five months ago and last week.

That imbalance shows up in things like money for Hawaii’s school kids.

The Department of Education, for instance, said it needed an extra $78 million to run the schools, but the Legislature added only $38 million.

That is a tiny slice of the state school system’s more than $1.5 billion annual budget, but DOE officials said it meant a $22 million technology request for things such as more laptops for students will be put off.

Last month the Hawaii Health Systems Corp. announced that 87 workers at three Hawaii island hospitals would be laid off because of a $7 million deficit in its new budget. In 2014, another 35 Hawaii island health workers lost their jobs because of the deficit.

Ige’s advisor and chief of staff, Mike McCartney, said Hawaii’s expenditures are still projected to exceed revenues for three years or more.

"It is a balanced budget because we are using the funds from our carryover balance. So it is not unbalanced," McCartney explained.

McCartney added that Ige also wants to grow the economy so that more businesses put more money into the economy, and also to "make government more efficient, effective and productive."

Ige told the Kauai Chamber of Commerce last week that he is backing new jobs in digital media and creative media and providing more opportunities for high school students.

The disconnect in all this is that the state budget is just a remorseless spreadsheet calculating some money going in and more money going out.

Past governors and legislative leaders, when looking at unfavorable math, just blinked and said keep on spending.

Ige, helped along with fiscal conservatives in the Legislature such as Luke; Sen. Jill Tokuda, Ways and Means chairwoman; and Sen. Ron Kouchi, the new Senate president, are most comfortable keeping an equally tight hand on the budget.

The unanswered question is what happens at the eventual meeting between the "hopes and dreams division" of the Governor’s Office and the "no means no" department of the same office.

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