Members of the House Finance and Senate Ways and Means committees kicked off a conference committee Tuesday night to start negotiating a final budget draft for the coming two fiscal years.
Lawmakers will need to agree to amendments made to . The version calls for $10.98 billion in spending in fiscal 2012 and $10.97 billion in fiscal 2013. The includes $11 billion in spending in fiscal 2012, and $10.9 billion the following year.
State department heads and members of the public filled the a third-floor conference room for the initial meeting Tuesday, which only lasted about 20 minutes.
House Finance Chairman Marcus Oshiro said he hopes to wrap up the conference by next Tuesday. The committee will meet again Wednesday night at 7 p.m.
The “agreements” and “disagreements” between the House and Senate drafts have been posted online (and collectively total more than 1,000 pages):
The House version had been approved in early March before the Council on Revenues lowered its forecast to reflect the Japan disasters.
The Senate version was approved in early April and cut $654 million from Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s proposed two-year budget. The Senate budget is 3.5 percent smaller than the $22.7 billion two-year budget Abercrombie put forward in February.
On Tuesday, Ways and Means Chairman David Ige told the committee the main differences between the two versions were:
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The Senate rejected every request to restore funding to make up for furloughs.
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The Senate identified $30 million worth of state government vacancies (out of $80 million total).
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The Senate rejected Abercrombie’s promise to cover a larger share of public workers’ health premiums, which would have cost $54 million in both 2012 and 2013. The draft instead reflects a 50-50 split.
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The Senate reviewed the governor’s requests for “add ons” ($50 million in each year), and only funded about two-thirds of the request in the first year, and one-third in the second year.
Oshiro told the committee that “this budget cannot stand alone,” and suggested the group start by agreeing to about a dozen surviving revenue-generating measures.
Ige agreed that the revenue bills are important, but noted that work on the main budget should move forward at the same time.
“We do believe that discussions on the revenue generating bills should proceed parallel with our work on the budget, because to stop work on all budget matters prior to decisions on the revenue measures, I don’t believe serves the public well,” Ige said.
These are the revenue measures Oshiro highlighted for the committee:
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— which would raise $68 million from taxing pensions and eliminating itemized deductions for higher income earners.
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and — which would generate about $173 million in 2012 and $220 million in 2013 by suspending nearly two dozen GET exemptions for businesses.
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— which would raise $6.5 million by revising the Renewable Energy Technologies Income Tax Credit.
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— which would generate $13.3 million by capping the Transient Accommodations Tax (TAT) amounts that go to the counties, as well as increasing the TAT on timeshares by 2 percentage points.
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— which would raise $7.3 million by increasing the state’s alcohol tax by 20 percent.
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