Gov. David Ige has given the legislative branch a fairly sunny review for its work on the just-concluded 2016 session. Now his lawmaking role kicks in: deciding which bills become pages in the Hawaii Revised Statutes, and which are best dispatched with ink from his veto pen.

While there has been movement on some long-stalled initiatives that deserve to be signed into law, Ige should keep that other pen handy.

The core of the work at the state Capitol is always whittling the budget into shape. So it’s distressing to see money being misspent. For example: Legislators approved a severance package for employees of the state-run hospital facilities in Maui County who lose their public jobs when the hospitals transition to private ownership.

The package, sought by the public worker unions, would benefit current employees at Maui Memorial Medical Center, Kula Hospital and Lanai Community Hospital. Staff for the Employees Retirement System estimate the severance payments and special retirement bonuses could cost the state $40 million or more.

Ige should reject this payout as simply too rich, especially when viewed in the context of many other competing needs that came up short.

Wes Machida, state budget director and former head of ERS, rightly opposed the measure, Senate Bill 2077, as setting a precedent that would threaten the sustainability of the retirement system.

Also rising to near the top of the veto candidate list is House Bill 1850, which seeks to allow a “transient accommodations broker” such as the website Airbnb to collect the tourism tax on the state’s behalf.

Those who rent short-term accommodations should contribute to state revenues; however, the final version of the bill does not require the broker to ensure the legality of the advertised rentals.

The stories of vacation-rental businesses making money off campsites and other scofflaws stand as compelling evidence that there should be tools in place for enforcing the county zoning rules over such operations.

Already the state is developing regulations for the placement of rental advertisements that would require a tax identification number to be posted. Completion of these rules needs to be accelerated.

But in any case they should be completed and applied before the state begins collecting the revenue, or there will never be an incentive to rein in those running afoul of county laws.

The governor has no line-item veto power, so some disappointing elements persist in the state spending plan:

>> The halting progress toward replacing the critically overcrowded Oahu Community Correctional Center.

Ige had proposed a rebuilt OCCC on the grounds of the Halawa Correctional Facility, but the initial cost estimate of $489 million was quickly, and inexplicably, revised upward to $645 million. So lawmakers felt that a $5.4 million study was warranted to carefully vet the prospects and costs of this important project. Taxpayers can only hope that such a whopping figure for a study produces information that advances the end goal — the actual development of the facility — rather than ending up uselessly on a shelf.

>> Campbell High School’s urgently needed classroom building, for which Ige had requested $30 million.

The project for the rapidly growing West Oahu communities ended up with only $12 million in the budget. Meanwhile, plans for a new Maui high school seem to be barreling along.

The state Department of Education does not even rank the Maui high school atop its matrix of facility needs. The administration should do what it can to speed the release of Campbell’s funds and keep that project on schedule.

Lawmakers did make progress on several fronts, of course:

>> The final measure on the revocable water permits — in the wake of the Alexander &Baldwin Inc. sugar plantation closure on Maui — represents an acceptable compromise. It would give the company three years to fulfill a pledged transition to other agricultural uses.

But there should be no further delay permitted after that point; the state must move toward a more rational system of long-term lease applications that further the most responsible use of the public’s water resources.

>> The backlog of rape kits that have languished without analysis will be addressed — once the state attorney general, as directed, devises a guideline for processing the most critical ones first. The database this will yield is too important to criminal investigation to ignore.

>> The renovation of the Hawaii State Hospital, the state’s psychiatric hospital in Kaneohe, at long last will move ahead, buttressing an institution that serves a critical community need.

Many more community needs are still outstanding, however — leaving the next Legislature a full agenda and, once again, a chance to chart the next course correction.