WHAT is the price to communicate? Within the state government the going rate is apparently $48,000 a year. That is how much the state is willing to pay to find out what is going on at Campbell Industrial Park. How Legislature
is spending your moneyHow much to find out what's up with the homeless at Honolulu International Airport? If you are the state, you would be willing to pony up $200,000 to get the job done.
Welcome to the strange but expensive world of the Hawaii state budget. Like the Palm Court district at Ala Moana Shopping Center, there's a special part of the state budget just for the no-cost-is-too-high, no-demand-too-obscure bureaucrat.
It is section five of HB 350, but those at the Legislature just call it "the provisos."
Here are some of the things that the Legislature and the governor will be providing for in this year's budget:
"The sum of $48,000 shall be expended for contracting a compliance coordinator whose primary duties shall be to communicate data regarding compliance with emission standards at the Campbell Industrial Park and to facilitate communications between government agencies, industrial groups and neighboring communities."
For a less stressful position, the state is offering $41,307 for fiscal 1997-98 and $53,126 for the next year to create a visitor information "assistant job training program" at the Molokai airport. The state figures it can get two half-time visitor information assistant trainee positions and one full-time position. And the bureaucrats wonder why business is screaming at government to privatize.
If you are really searching for the big bucks, however, skip Molokai and get to Honolulu International Airport, where for $200,000 you might be the lucky one charged with providing contract services to:
"Evaluate and help resolve the homeless population at the airport."
You will be aided by the Department of Transportation, which is also ordered to "prepare a report on the status and possible solutions to the homeless population at the airport."
Perhaps foreign policy is more your bag; don't turn this one down. The state is offering $50,000 a year to develop a bilingual citizenship class "to conduct bilingual outreach and community education programs on the benefit and responsibility of becoming U.S. citizens and to educate and prepare legal immigrants for the naturalization examination."
When my grandparents came to America, they just called it "night school."
School kids aren't left out of the state largess. How about a conference of high school kids to figure what to do about all their problems?
WELL, not all their problems, but the Legislature gave $25,000 to hold a conference so students can "identify, discuss and arrive at recommended solutions to major youth problems, with emphasis on school problems that require the attention of joint action by the students, the Department of Education and the Legislature."
Perhaps you thought we couldn't afford all this, what with the budget crisis and all. Maybe you thought spending so much on the trivial would endanger our bond rating. Once again, the legislators beat you to the punch.
They tossed in $30,000 for a "bond improvement protocol fund to be expended at the discretion of the director of budget and finance for improvement of the state and the counties' bond rating and sales."
It is only money -- yours.