This promises to be a busy week as legislative committees start a new round of hearings on those bills that survived last week’s crossover.

One index of how much the underlying culture of the Legislature has changed in 25 years. In 1983, if I recall correctly, the Senate broke into open warfare over the issue of the budget worksheets. These were treated as top secret and not made available even to Senators who didn’t sit on the Ways & Means Committee. A group of dissident senators filed suit against the Senate seeking access to the worksheets, joined by Common Cause/Hawaii. Congressman Neil Abercrombie was a member of that dissident group, along with former Gov. Ben Cayetano.

Although the lawsuit wasn’t successful, the political pressure started the process of reform.

Now the budget worksheets containing details of the House version of the budget (operating/CIP, and Judiciary) are available online for public viewing. Viewed in historical perspective, that’s a huge change, due at least in part to that revolt in the Senate.

The House Majority Blog reported on Saturday’s hearing on grants-in-aid requests, and notes:

Chair of Finance Marcus Oshiro asked all applicants that if they received an appropriation last year, what is the status of those funds. Almost all the applicants responded that they are still waiting for the money to be released by the Governor. [emphasis in the original]

The Advertiser adds its editorial voice to the opposition to this year’s bid to cut back on openness or “sunshine” in meetings of public agencies, pointing to Senate Bill 2174 as one that “must be stopped.”

The Hawaii Superferry Unofficial Blog is really must reading to keep up with what’s happening with the ferry. Sunday’s entry recounts the Superferry’s huge appetite for marine diesel, where rising fuel costs may have permanently altered the financial equation.

Superferry Alakai uses 6,942 gallons of marine diesel per trip, 13,900 round trip, 97,300 gallons a week, 417,000 gallons monthly. Three hundred sixty-five round trips from Oahu to Maui use over 5 million gallons, which at $3.50 per gallon equals $17,500,000 annually.

When Alakai says fill’er up, she means it; 56,800 gallons is just shy of $200,000. And they wanted to add a second trip?

State Rep. Glenn Wakai was briefly promoted to “congressman” by the Saipan Tribune and Marianas Variety in their reports on Wakai’s contribution of used books and clothing that will be distributed to schools and community organizations in the Northern Marianas Islands.

A few billion here, a few billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. A Washington Post column yesterday puts the long term cost of the war in Iraq at $3 Trillion, with a “T”. The column, based on the authors’ new book, also recounts public estimates made by Bush administration officials at the beginning of the war, at least one as low as just $1.7 billion.

Why doesn’t the public understand the staggering scale of our expenditures? In part because the administration talks only about the upfront costs, which are mostly handled by emergency appropriations. (Iraq funding is apparently still an emergency five years after the war began.) These costs, by our calculations, are now running at $12 billion a month — $16 billion if you include Afghanistan. By the time you add in the costs hidden in the defense budget, the money we’ll have to spend to help future veterans, and money to refurbish a military whose equipment and materiel have been greatly depleted, the total tab to the federal government will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion.

With the presidential candidates focusing on the economy, they’ve got to tackle the cost of the war head-on.