City to Feds: Pay Us $37 Million For Hosting APEC
President Barack Obama will arrive for the APEC summit next week.
The thank you he may get for bringing the big show to town is a bill from the city of Honolulu asking for financial compensation.
In a resolution introduced by Honolulu City Council Chair Ernie Martin and member Stanley Chang, the city estimates the cost of providing extra security for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit at $37 million. And it says the federal government should cover the tab.
“WHEREAS, since the United States government will get significant benefits from APEC, the United States should reimburse the counties for the expenses relating to APEC,” the resolution reads.
, if approved by the Council, would merely add the text of the resolution to the Hawaii State Association of Counties package to be submitted to the Hawaii Legislature next year. In essence, it represents the city asking the state to in turn ask the feds to pick up the check.
Both Martin and Chang told Civil Beat that this isn’t the first time that the idea of reimbursement has come up.
“I think from the very inception, even prior to my tenure on the Council, there was representation that the county had hoped it would be able to recoup these expenses from the federal government,” Martin said.
Indeed, the issue has come up before.
In April 2010, U.S. Sens. Daniel K. Inouye and Daniel Akaka joined with then-Gov. Linda Lingle and then-Mayor Mufi Hannemann for a press conference where they discussed, among other things, reimbursement from the federal government, according to a .
That story and pegged the cost to the city at $28 million — and rising. The new figure of $37 million comes from the Honolulu Police Department, the Honolulu Fire Department and the Honolulu Department of Emergency Services.
“This is a significant cost for us. Thirty-seven million dollars is a lot of money,” Martin said. “Whatever we could recover from the federal government I think would be much appreciated.”
Chang said the city’s already been working with the feds to secure some portion of the funding. He said that it’s only fair, considering both the city and the state have been laying out millions of dollars for an event “really being spearheaded by the federal government.”
“While we all support APEC and are excited to welcome President Obama and 20 of his closest world leader friends, we do feel it’s important that Honolulu taxpayers and Hawaii taxpayers not be expected to shoulder the entire burden,” Chang said.
The argument that the federal government should bear the costs because it stands to benefit from the event is interesting, considering local officials have long touted the benefits Honolulu and Hawaii can expect to glean from playing host.
“The city will benefit in terms of the exposure that we’re going to be provided with, especially to the countries that are going to attend this event,” Martin said. But the security costs are by and large due to the status of the summit as a National Security Event, based on federal standards and requests from the federal government.
Martin said he was told by the Honolulu Police Department that when Seattle hosted APEC in 1993, that city asked the federal government to chip in for the cost of security.
“I believe Seattle did recover some reimbursement. I don’t think it was equal to all of their expenditures,” he said.
