Hovering like helicopter parents, the 76 legislators ended the 2016 Legislature floating just above the University of Hawaii, poised to swoop down to rearrange the deck chairs.
Although it was back in 2000 that the Legislature and voters approved a state constitutional amendment promising autonomy for the UH, what would it hurt to give just a bit more advice?
Observers are already dissecting the Legislature’s demand that the UH College of Education move off the Manoa campus, an order that came via a proviso attached to the CIP portion of the budget.
But there is also a little-noticed directive to move the state film studio at Diamond Head to West Oahu, perhaps next to UH’s West Oahu campus.
Lawmakers linked paying off a $17 million EB-5 loan to bail out the overbudget West Oahu campus with a provision that UH transfer 30 acres of its property to the High Technology and Development Corp., the state’s Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT), and the state film office by the beginning of 2018.
At the same time, there’s another proviso ordering DBEDT’s creative industry division to “develop a transition plan for the film studio to relocate to West Oahu and for the Diamond Head studio property to revert to the administrative control of the UH.”
Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, vice chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, is in charge of the CIP portion. He shepherded the UH changes through committee after meeting with Kalbert Young, UH’s chief
financial officer, and Luis Salaveria, DBEDT director.
“This has all been around for a long time; it is education with economic impact,” said Dela Cruz.
Asked what all these directives do to the theory of UH autonomy, Dela Cruz said that his directions don’t change UH spending plans.
“We are not telling UH what to do,” Dela Cruz said in an interview.
At the same time, it may not be a clear-cut direction. Sen. Jill Tokuda, who is WAM chairwoman and helped author the operating part of the state budget, said she wants all budget provisos to “be clear in terms of providing legislative direction and specific intent. It should be a direct reflection of public discussions we have had.”
Dela Cruz said he envisions that UH’s creative media division would work at West Oahu because it could draw talent from the acclaimed Waianae High School Seariders’ production team and that students from the school could continue to learn at the media center.
If all the talk and promise of creative media and new film studies sound familiar, it is because Hollywood producer Ryan Kavanaugh had been lobbying for years to get a $200 million film studio built on Maui. After much heavy-handed lobbying in 2013, the Legislature called for a cooling-off period that included a $100,000 study of sites, business plans and market analysis for a creative media and film study development complex.
That study, authorized in 2015, is now underway. Notes from a preproposal bid conference said “the analysis plans and site recommendations will help decision makers in Hawaii understand the additional support required to expand the creative media and film industry in the state.”
Or you could just stick it in the budget and call it a day.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
