At least 5 big issues await cash-strapped Legislature

Your state Legislature slips into town next Wednesday.

It is expected to meet without the usual public spectacle of chow fun-gobbling lobbyists, well-rewarded influence brokers and T-shirt-wearing community activists all clogging the Capitol’s interior lanais and hallways. This year the House and Senate canceled the usual parties and are planning to shorten the opening day speeches.

All that is due to Hawaii’s persistently moribund economy.

If this year’s economy is expected to get just slightly better, with perhaps a few more jobs and not as many threats of business closings, there are at least five big issues awaiting the ministrations of the 76 lawmakers.

Taxes top the list.

Just last year, the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie pushed through a historic $600 million tax increase. Some were new taxes and some were temporarily abolished tax breaks. The Council on Revenues flatly said the projected new tax money isn’t showing up. As it turns out, Hawaii businesses are not populated by people looking to give money to the tax collectors and they have found ways to avoid the tax increases.

At the same time, the state budget is just only sort of balanced and by fiscal 2014 we will be short $164 million, with the chasm between money collected and money spent growing deeper every year.

You know the drill: Cut services, stop hiring, stop spending and raise taxes — or go to item No. 2: Bring in a casino.

The pro-gaming forces are gathering and they feel this year could be the perfect storm with a budget written in red, the rising fear of raising taxes in an election year or simply allowing a casino company to pay the state maybe $400 million a year in return for setting up shop in Waikiki. Rumors abound, but one more negative Council on Revenues meeting could be the tipping point.

Meanwhile, items No. 3 and No. 4 are new losses. Hawaii was staggered in December as the Hawaii Medical Center folded operations in Liliha and Ewa. This was not a minor blip. Those two hospitals employed 1,000 people and their closures meant that Hawaii lost the only organ transplant center in our island state and the only full-service emergency hospital in West Oahu.

Saying that Queen’s Medical Center may pick up the organ transplant business in six months is little comfort to people hoping for a new kidney or for heart attack victims in Lualualei. Somehow the state bears some responsibility for ensuring the health of its citizens. If the Abercrombie administration can urge a statewide tax on sugary drinks in order to raise money to treat diabetes, isn’t there an equally strong case to be made that the state make sure Hawaii has enough hospitals to treat our sick?

Times have changed since we were going to become the "Mayo Clinic of the Pacific." Now we just want emergency rooms without an all-night backlog.

Item No. 4 is your chance to buy a working Hawaii oil refinery because Tesoro Corp. wants to sell the plant that makes half of the state’s petroleum products. Already boasting the nation’s highest gasoline and electricity rates, the last thing the state needs is an oil refinery monopoly.

In the case of hospitals and oil refineries, the marketplace has spoken; it is time for government to figure out what to do.

And finally, there is the matter of the new public school teachers’ contract. Abercrombie won a verbal agreement with the teachers union. If an agreement is good news, the implementation is mostly a question mark. The contract is reportedly for six years and includes some unspecified raise.

Neither Abercrombie nor the union are giving particulars, but the state’s biggest union, the Hawaii Government Employees Association, has a clause in its contract saying if another public union gets a better deal, then the HGEA gets it, too.

Does the HGEA get a six-year contract with a pay raise? Can the state afford this? How?

Attempting to answer those questions and more is why the Legislature has to meet every year.

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