Mark down Jan. 4 as the date when the state House Democrats, in coalition with House Republicans, put Rep. Sylvia Luke in charge of the House Finance Committee.

Some legislative position changes are for show, some for keeping the status quo — and then there are those that signal a real change.

Luke, an attorney, calls herself a fiscal conservative. In practice during this legislative session, Luke showed that while she is not averse to spending or taxes, she sees a state government budget that needs a systemic reorganization.

The changes to the budget started immediately, as Luke started interpreting the ground rules differently.

Much of the state budget is part of the nerdy nitpicking that accountants and attorneys adore, but makes TV news cameramen dive for the exits. Still it amounts to real money flowing from your pockets to the state treasury.

In one instance, the state budget adds up the number of employees in each state department and records the salaries. If the department has a job listed, even though no one is currently in that position, the salary is still counted.

The bureaucrat’s secret used to be that if you didn’t hire anyone for the position, you could use that money for other stuff, like overtime or vacation pay. Departments would then come back to the Legislature and say they needed a higher position count because they didn’t have enough people to get the job done.

This year Luke called them on that.

"We don’t want to penalize a department, if they need these things, but we had to have a clearer picture," Luke said, explaining that her committee at first knocked out 1,000 state positions.

In all, $168 million in vacant positions was spotlighted.

The final number was reduced, but Luke made it clear to all departments that hiding the money in unfilled positions is not a game with a future.

In education, Luke and her Senate counterpart, Sen. David Ige, cut almost all of Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s program to put computer laptops or tablets in the hands of all public school students because, as she explained, the schools can’t account for much of what they do now — and the Department of Education is not even fully wired anyway.

"Just wiring three school complexes is costing $8 million, so this program was clearly underbudgeted," Luke said in an interview last week.

Luke was equally skeptical that there was enough money in Abercrombie’s plan to fund his much-publicized early learning preschool education project, so funds for that were trimmed.

Abercrombie also lost funding for his plans to improve the state’s information technology.

The final committee report on the budget plainly said it is not supporting "a budgeting philosophy that asserts that departments are entitled to base funding levels. Excess monies from existing appropriations, and lower priority purposes, should be budgeted for higher-priority programs and services on a statewide basis."

Luke summed it up in her interview saying: "I am in the Lowell Kalapa school of economics."

That new enrollee shocked Kalapa, who as president of the privately funded Hawaii Tax Foundation, is well-known as an economic curmudgeon. He speculates that perhaps his years of warnings are now being heard.

"I’ve been haranguing the Finance Committee and warning them not to spend money they don’t have," Kalapa said.

"(Luke) took seriously the fact that the governor’s budget didn’t match rhetoric about unfunded liability; she felt she had to cut back.

"You can’t be everyone’s friend and take care of the core problems," Kalapa said, explaining that the unfunded public worker retirement payments are the state’s biggest problem.

If Luke and Kalapa are singing from the same hymnal, if not from the same page, it means that this year’s budget diet may be more than a one-year fad.

And that would be a victory for taxpayers, if not the bureaucrats.

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