Politically motivated haste not working well for Ige

The Legislature is on the verge of handing former colleague and fellow Democrat Gov. David Ige his first major defeat of 2016.

Ige is staking much of his political future on the promise that he can air condition 1,000 public school classrooms by December and then put cooling plans in place for all schools in the state by 2018.

To do that, he must have legislation passed now. In hopes of speeding the process along, he declared the needed spending bill to be an “emergency appropriation.”

Ige’s bill noted that for his program to get started, contractors need to be able to work during the summer when schools were out. Therefore, the legislation had to be passed “immediately.”

Then in a formal letter to the Legislature, Ige put a deadline on passage, “by February 29, 2016.”

Legislative leaders say there are a number of reasons why that is just not going to happen.

“This is clearly a vehicle for addressing the major problem of cooling the schools, but the question remains on how we are going to approach it,” said Sen. Jill Tokuda, Ways and Means chairwoman.

There are questions about Ige’s plan to pay for air conditioning by borrowing $100 million from the Green Energy Market Securitization (GEMS) program.

“Questions about the appropriateness of the GEMS funds, this Legislature and even the governor when he was WAM chair — making sure the fund has a clear nexus to the money being appropriated … you can’t just rush this sort of thing,” Tokuda said in an interview.

In legislative testimony earlier this year, the Tax Foundation of Hawaii questioned Ige’s financial scheme because the GEMS funding was created to support alternative energy projects, not air conditioning schools.

As it stands now, Ige’s House bill has been deferred, but a similar one is moving through committees; meanwhile in the Senate, Ige’s bill has yet to be scheduled for a hearing by Tokuda’s committee, but she says though no date has been set, she will hear it.

Even if that happens, Tokuda doubted that final action would be taken immediately.

And the Feb. 29 deadline?

Even though this is a Leap Year, Monday falls in the middle of the Legislature’s mandatory five-day recess so the House and Senate chambers will be dark.

So while a bill may eventually pass the Legislature, it will be in due course, not as an expedited emergency.

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