Gov. Neil Abercrombie said Thursday that the state is back on track financially, and suggested he would share quarterly reports on state spending to make the budget process more transparent.
Lifted by a record November bond sale of nearly $1.3 billion, the governor has sought to recast any negative public perception about his first year in office by stressing that the state is now in better financial health.
He will release on Dec. 19 a supplemental budget draft — an update for the second year of the state’s two-year budget cycle — and promised there would be no more shortcuts. The governor has claimed that former Gov. Linda Lingle left the state in a "fiscal ditch," citing, among other choices, her decision to delay income tax refunds to help balance the budget on paper.
Abercrombie, in a speech Thursday before the Hawaii Tax Institute at the Sheraton Waikiki, said he would try to have a positive financial balance every quarter "that people can see and they can count on and they know is real and is not some kind of jury-rigged number meant to fool you."
"There’s no kicking the can down the road."
Abercrombie’s increasingly dismissive statements about Lingle’s financial management have provoked a response from the former Republican governor’s allies. Barry Fukunaga, Lingle’s former chief of staff, wrote last week that Abercrombie is trying to shift blame for his rocky first year.
On Thursday Fukunaga, former state budget director Georgina Kawamura and former state comptroller Russ Saito issued a statement alleging that Abercrombie’s "victory lap" on the bond sale is misleading.
The Lingle trio claimed the successful bond sale was based on tax increases — mostly through the temporary suspension of general excise tax exemptions — that provide the state with new revenue but that come from the pockets of residents and businesses. They also complained that the governor raided the state’s hurricane relief fund and rainy day fund to get through the last fiscal year, money that had been set aside for emergencies.
Abercrombie has said he intends to replenish the emergency funds as soon as possible from cash proceeds from the bond sale — not from new debt, as Lingle’s allies say — subject to approval from state lawmakers.
With Lingle a candidate in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate next year to succeed U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, both Republicans and Democrats like Abercrombie have a political incentive to frame their versions of how the state emerged from massive deficits during the recession.
"If I’m to take the criticism for the last year, I’m also entitled then, I think, to ask people to give credit where credit is due," Abercrombie told reporters.
