Money to battle rapid ohia death, subsidies for rural schools, personnel costs at Hawaii Community Correctional Center and agriculture and water programs are facing new cuts as Gov. David Ige adjusts his proposed budget to account for an unexpectedly bleak economic picture.
Ige made the budget adjustments in a message Tuesday to the state Legislature, after economic projections for the fiscal year starting in July came in lower than projected. The state Council on Revenues dropped its predictions of 5.5 percent growth to 3 percent, based on slowing tax revenues.
The administration stressed that the cuts aren’t to the budget but are reductions of planned increases in the budget.
“We’re not cutting the base budget,” Laurel Johnston, deputy director of the state Department of Budget and Finance, said Monday. “We’re just reducing the add-ons.”
Still, those who were optimistic about new money coming to needed programs when Ige announced his budget in December can’t help but be disappointed. Ige, for example, asked the Legislature to put $3.5 million into the budget to help stop the dreaded rapid ohia death, as part of a $30 million sustainability initiative that also includes expanded farm loans and improved water infrastructure.
His new plan cuts $1.5 million for invasive species control, including rapid ohia death response in the Natural Area Reserves and Watershed Management Program. Calls to the Hawaii Island Invasive Species Committee were not returned by press time Monday.
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources last year presented a three-year strategic response plan that estimated the need for $3.6 million the first year. The plan was developed by members of a rapid ohia death working group that meets monthly.
Cuts to planned increases in agricultural programs also will affect the Big Island, home to most of the state’s agricultural industry.
The Livestock Feed Subsidy Program will lose $1 million of its planned increase and there will be $200,000 less for agricultural surveys.
The Hawaii Water Infrastructure Special Fund will lose $1 million each in general funds and special funds. The Forestry Resource Management and Development Program will be reduced by $300,000.
Hawaii Community Correctional Center, one of the most crowded jails in the state, also will see a little less. It loses $700,000 in personnel costs for overtime and standby pay for officers.
Cuts also are coming to the planned increases in public education funding.
An $18 million hit to the $28 million increase originally planned for the weighted student formula could especially hurt the island’s small rural schools, such as Honokaa High and Intermediate School, Honokaa Elementary, Ka‘u High School, Ka‘u Learning Academy, Kohala Elementary School, Kohala Middle School, Kohala High School, Naalehu Elementary School, Pahala Elementary School, Paauilo Elementary and Intermediate, Waikoloa Elementary and Middle School and Waimea Elementary School.
The Hawaii State Teachers Association is asking the Legislature for an extra $1,000-per-pupil allocation to help ensure public school funding equity by guaranteeing minimum staffing levels for remote schools on the Big Island, Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Niihau.
Even with additional allocations for Neighbor Island schools, the amount — calculated at only $16.52 per Neighbor Island student in 2017-18 — simply isn’t enough to pay for “extras” such as librarians, counselors and others not directly engaged in classroom instruction, HSTA maintains.
Johnston said the governor put more money into the per-student weighted formula than did the state Department of Education.
An HSTA spokesman said Monday that the teachers union was still studying the proposed cuts to the increases and was not yet ready to comment about the details.
The biggest in the approximately $220 million in cutbacks comes to the state’s retirement system, where Ige had planned to prepay 100 percent of future retirees health and other non-pension benefits this year. He dropped it to 80 percent, the minimum required by law, taking $74.2 million from the proposed budget.
Email Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.
