Gov. David Ige promised in January his administration would install air conditioning and other equipment to cool 1,000 classrooms before the end of 2016, but state lawmakers apparently aren’t moving quickly enough on that initiative to suit the governor.

For the second time this year, Ige is urging lawmakers to fast-track bills that would authorize funding for the classroom work, but key lawmakers in the House and Senate say Ige will have to wait.

Both Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Jill Tokuda and House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke said Ige’s cool-the-schools initiative needs to fit into the overall state budget, which will not be completed until late next month.

In his State of the State address in January, Ige proposed the state use $100 million in Green Energy Market Securitization (GEMS) funds to quickly install energy-efficiency equipment and air conditioners in the 1,000 classrooms by the end of 2016.

Ige then wrote to House and Senate lawmakers Feb. 12 and again Thursday requesting “immediate consideration and passage” of bills that would allow the schools cooling initiative to move forward quickly.

The House earlier this month approved House Bill 2569, a version of the Ige initiative that would allow the state to borrow $100 million in GEMS funding for the schools initiative. However, Luke pointed out that bill also includes an appropriation for $7 million from the general treasury to begin paying the interest on the borrowed money.

Luke described Ige’s fast-tracking request as “problematic” because lawmakers don’t usually approve appropriations or spending bills until the entire budget has been completed.

Each budget item needs to be fit into the overall spending plan for the upcoming year, which means the Ige initiative must wait until the budget is finalized, she said. The budget would normally be completed in late April.

“In a legislative process way, we just cannot expedite right now,” said Luke (D, Punchbowl- Pauoa-Nuuanu). The classroom initiative “is a priority,” she said, adding, “It’s just we have to follow our budgeting and legislative process, and I don’t know how we can do an appropriation before we pass the budget.”

State lawmakers do approve emergency appropriations in some cases when funding is needed immediately for the current budget year, “but this didn’t come down as an emergency appropriation,” she said.

Luke said the administration had been hoping to complete work in some classrooms under the new initiative by the end of this month, but that won’t be possible. But she said the state Department of Education has developed a timetable that would still allow the administration to cool 1,000 classrooms by the end of the year.

Tokuda (D, Kailua- Kaneohe) said the House and Senate have proposed bills that differ in some key ways, and lawmakers still need to work out which approach to take. The version in Senate Bill 3126 would not use GEMS money, and instead would use general fund money the state received from a one-time Medicaid reimbursement.

Tokuda said the DOE has told lawmakers that they are preparing the way for the classroom improvements by surveying and assessing campuses so that “it is ready to go once the resources become available to actually deploy out and start to contract out the work.”

“It’s not like nothing is being done up until this point,” she said. “There’s parallel movements going on in the departments.”