House and Senate lawmakers announced they have reached agreement on a new, "very skinny" state budget that would limit general fund spending to about $6.6 billion in the year ahead, or roughly the same total as Gov. David Ige proposed in the draft budget he submitted to lawmakers earlier this year.
Ige and state lawmakers have expressed concern that state government spending in recent years has been outpacing state tax collections and other revenue, but lawmakers said that pattern will continue at least for the fiscal year that begins July 1. They said they are still unsure whether state spending will be brought into line with state revenues for the following year.
Few details of the overall budget were available Tuesday night, and lawmakers said they did not have a total available for the proposed spending for all funds next year. The budget for the current fiscal year is $6.2 billion in general funds and $12.1 billion for all funds.
"We just wanted to make sure that what we passed was balanced and responsible," said House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke (D, Punchbowl-Pauoa-Nuuanu). "We are concerned about the spending in the out years, and because of that we are controlling government growth and spending at the same time."
Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Jill Tokuda echoed those statements.
"We are very aware of the mounting obligations that we have as a state, so we’re making sure that we balance all of the increasing costs that we have against wanting to make sure that the budget that we passed reflects the priorities that we have as a Legislature — to funding various needs of education, to natural resources, to public safety, all of these different things — and also making sure that we can sustain these costs over time," said Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe).
One significant change in the budget is lawmakers say they are proceeding more cautiously on spending on information technology projects.
In recent years the Legislature made tens of millions of dollars available for large-scale computer modernization initiatives to try to make state government more efficient, but Luke said lawmakers opted to "take a step back" from that effort this year.
The Ige administration announced last month it canceled a solicitation that invited vendors to provide the state with a new, high-tech system to integrate human resources and financial data because the proposals were all too expensive.
That cancellation of the "Statewide Unified Resource Framework" or SURF initiative came after the state spent $10.8 million developing that request for proposals and performing related research and studies, and spent another $321,303 on related legal costs for the project.
Last month Ige also canceled the state Department of Transportation’s so-called "FAST" computer system that was supposed to replace an out-of-date system in the state Highways Division. Officials acknowledged the new system still doesn’t work even after the state spent $13.88 million on consultants and equipment to try to put new technology in place.
Tokuda said the new budget will provide $10 million a year for the next two years, with the money under the control of the state’s chief information officer. She said the idea is to "look at this as an opportunity, how can you be more effective in how you procure the various IT systems that we’re looking to have."
Also included in the final budget draft is $50 million for each of the next two years for the Rental Housing Trust Fund, and $44.43 million for the University of Hawaii system construction program.
The state construction budget also includes nearly $216 million for rental car facility improvements statewide, and $250 million for Kapalama Military Reservation improvements at Honolulu Harbor.
