Editorial: Veto $50 million for tech campus

Gov. Josh Green unveiled a packed wish list of expenditures he wanted to fund at the start of the 2023 legislative session, at a time when the state coffers were expected to hold a $2 billion surplus.

At that point, he had added $17.5 million to the executive budget request for "basic infrastructure on undeveloped land for the first responders tech campus" envisioned in Central Oahu.

Times change, though, and even that appropriation now seems extraneous — let alone the $50 million for the proposed First Responder Technology Campus that slid through in the Legislature's mad dash to settle the state's fiscal 2023-2025 biennium budget.

Not only is this spending nonessential, its approval shows that the review of final bills at the end of session needs reform to avoid some of this confusion in the future.

A late revision to projected tax collections from the Council on Revenues has compelled Green to claw back $270 million from the spending plan the Legislature handed to him upon adjourning for the year.

In a May 25 interview on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser's "Spotlight Hawaii" webcast, Green was not specific about where the cuts would fall, other than saying that housing and expenditures for homelessness, education and climate projects would be protected.

The ones the governor plans to cross off the spending plan should be clear by June 16-19, he said, when the final budget is released, although his full "intent to veto" list isn't due until June 26.

"I’m a little reluctant to start other large projects until we’ve dealt with what's fundamental to society here," he said.

Well, that's a hint, or should be. Among the projects that hardly qualify as "fundamental to society" is the expansive, 243-acre campus for as many as 19 law-enforcement, fire, defense and other emergency-response government agencies. That project has a price tag of somewhere between $315 million and $470 million at full build-out — and taxpayers know only too well about cost overruns in Hawaii.

Further, it lacks the commitment of the Legislature, or the endorsement of all the agencies that are supposed to use the campus for training, office space, hotel rooms and other purposes.

The specific measure for the project, Senate Bill 1469, underwent several hearings but was blocked in the House Committee on Higher Education and Technology. Its chair, state Rep. Amy Perruso, who represents the district, rightly decided that other competing state needs should take precedence.

Regardless, a line-item for $50 million in construction funds for the campus found its way into the state budget during conference-committee wrangling by the Senate Ways and Means and the House Finance committees. Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, the Senate committee chair, said the funding request in the governor's executive budget merited it being there.

That ignores the fact that as the session progressed, the project failed to win the consensus of the Legislature. Neither does it justify the way this expenditure got through. Lawmakers had to cast final votes on the budget bill before worksheets detailing its content were available.

This leaves too much power in the hands of too few — namely, the budget chairs.

Lawmakers should adjust the session calendar so that this does not happen again. Once the bills emerge after conference committees hammer out details, members should have far more than 48 hours to study them. Especially for the all-important budget bill, allotting a week before the final vote would at least provide enough time for all the details to be in hand — for scrutiny by legislators and the public.

This session's rushed end-game also leaves Green to decide how to spend $200 million left unappropriated in the budget, and there are many needs to fill. In that context, the first-responder campus plainly meets the criteria for a line-item veto.

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