HONOLULU — Hawaii lawmakers passed out a number of bills in advance of a 6 p.m. internal deadline on Friday, but the $11.2 billion budget bill wasn’t among them.
Neither was the Senate’s flagship bill, which senators termed the Invest in Hawaii Act of 2012 when the legislative session convened in January.
The Senate’s flagship proposal, which was never given a hearing in the House, would have invested $500 million in repair and maintenance projects at state facilities. The priority would be given to projects that were ready to go — creating much-needed jobs in the construction industry.
The House, however, has been unwilling to increase the state’s debt beyond the $300 million for construction included in Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s budget request.
“We never had agreement, and it wasn’t close,” said Senate Ways and Means Chairman David Ige after the 6 p.m. deadline.
Without agreement on the budget, however, other bills depending on state funding also stalled.
Just after midnight, House Speaker Calvin Say and Senate President Shan Tsutsui announced they would extend the deadline for the budget and certain appropriation bills until 10 a.m. Monday.
The deadline extension could save several measures — including grants-in-aid, tax credits and economic stimulus proposals — that would have died in committee because they did not have finance committee approval.
“Due to the delay in negotiations and passage of House Bill 2012 — the supplemental executive budget bill — other several measures will need to be negotiated and conference committee reports filed,” said Say, D-St. Louis Heights-Wilhelmina Rise.
Tsutsui, D-Wailuku-Kahului, explained that measures that needed only finance committee approval, as well as fiscal bills under a $50 million cap, could still be considered through the weekend, with approval from both House and Senate money chairs.
House and Senate conferees have been working since April 17 to reach agreement on the supplemental budget for fiscal year 2013.
“The challenge is that the budget took longer than usual, and you really can’t appropriate funds for bills before the budget is closed,” said Ige, D-Aiea-Pearl City.
At 5:30 p.m., finance conference committee members announced they would extend their internal deadline and meet again at 9 p.m. to finish the state and judiciary budgets, along with another measure that would authorize the issuance of general obligation bonds. At midnight, the legislative leaders stepped in.
House Finance Chairman Marcus Oshiro said the legislative deadlines were self-imposed. “There’s no constitutional, legal requirement for us to end negotiations or discussions on these bills,” he said.
“Allowing these bills to die based on an internal procedural deadline is not in the best interest of the people of Hawaii,” Tsutsui said, after extending the deadline.
