When Gov. David Ige outlines his new agenda in his State of the State address on Monday, he will face feisty leaders in the House and Senate who are eager to probe and challenge his administration about the details and operations of state government.

When Ige delivered his State of the State speech a year ago, he admitted he was startled by the “mountain of challenges” he discovered in the governor’s office. He asked lawmakers to collaborate with his administration to resolve those problems.

The response from lawmakers so far this year may not be quite what he had in mind. Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Jill Tokuda set the mood by confronting a top Ige appointee about the failure of some state agencies to promptly spend federal money provided for transportation and housing projects.

“We have a lot of words that are always thrown around in this room on behalf of this administration — ‘collaboration,’ ‘bridging the gaps,’ ‘go through the silos,’” Tokuda said at a recent budget hearing. “Let’s actually see it. Why is it that when we talk about this, the budget director doesn’t know what you all are doing?

“You all have got to be working together to figure this out,” Tokuda said. She reminded Ige’s staff she is still waiting to see a plan from the administration that addresses how it will speed up the spending of federal funds.

Lawmakers say this year they are determined to “manage and direct” certain state departments and agencies, a turn of phrase that wouldn’t seem to bode well for the governor’s team as it prepares to launch Ige’s new initiatives.

Lawmakers are already criticizing some of the ideas Ige floated so far, and some Ige Cabinet members were stung by harsh questioning during briefings before the House Finance and Senate Ways and Means committees earlier this month.

House Finance Committee Chairwoman Sylvia Luke subjected Ige’s director of finance, Wes Machida, to a particularly long, unpleasant round of questioning about the state budget on Jan. 4. During that hearing, Machida told Luke half a dozen times that he did not have the information she wanted, and would have to report back to her later.

Luke warned Machida to pass the word to Ige’s other department heads: “It’s not excusable for you to say you’re going to get back to us.

“If specifically it’s relating to something that you’re asking for, if it’s part of your plan, you’d better have people who can answer the question,” Luke told him. “Otherwise you’re wasting your time, and you’re wasting all of our time.”

House Majority Leader Scott Saiki said lawmakers are determined to be more deeply involved in department operations because of alarming facts they uncovered after the end of the 2015 legislative session.

The Hawaii Public Housing Authority has a waiting list of more than 20,000 people, “and we have no idea how that is being addressed,” Saiki said. At the same time, he said there has been a “significant slowdown” in the number of housing units developed by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands over the past five years, which also has a long waiting list.

Saiki also pointed out that the transportation and Hawaiian Home Lands departments were so slow to spend federal funding for projects, the federal government either threatened to rescind the money or actually did so.

“We don’t understand why the agencies can’t spend the federal money,” Saiki said. “It’s free money.”

Saiki predicted lawmakers would use their power over the state’s purse strings to more closely direct state agencies, including public housing officials. “We’ll try to identify the kinds of projects they should be working on,” he said. “We’ll be more involved.”

This push by lawmakers for more control early in Ige’s term could complicate the governor’s efforts to pursue his own plans, and some members of the House and Senate are already questioning several initiatives he made public.

In his State of the State address, Ige is expected to announce a plan to rebuild the secure Forensics Building at the Hawaii State Hospital, as well as a plan to replace Oahu Community Correctional Center with a new facility in Halawa Valley.

But the powerful lawmakers who run the House and Senate money committees may have their own ideas. Luke criticized the administration’s budget request of $160.5 million for the state hospital project in Kaneohe, pointing out that lawmakers set aside money years ago to demolish a building to make way for the project but the Department of Health still hasn’t done the work.

Luke and Tokuda also expressed doubts about new Ige proposals to spend an extra $164 million to more quickly pay off the state’s unfunded liability for public worker retiree health benefits, and to tuck away another $100 million in the state’s emergency budget reserve, or “rainy day” fund.

“These are not small-ticket items, these are significant things that could make or break a budget, not just in Year One but in bienniums to come,” Tokuda said. “What Chair Luke and I tried very hard to do in terms of righting the ship, getting us back into the black by the next biennium, that’s now off course.”

Stashing away more budget-reserve money or prepaying state health care obligations may be good decisions, but lawmakers noted the union contracts covering tens of thousands of public workers expire next fiscal year and the administration didn’t budget for a new round of public employee raises. Each pay increase of 1 percent for public workers costs the state about $50 million extra per year.

The lawmakers further noted Ige’s draft budget would spend $488 million more next fiscal year than the state expects to receive in revenue.

“It’s not so much the big-ticket items that concern us,” Luke said. “It’s the fact that the overall picture is we’re spending $488 million more than we take in, so if you’re gonna do big-ticket items, then it would be prudent for them to look at the base budget and propose similar reductions.

“There’s no significant reduction in the current budget to do a balance,” she said.