The Internet has made it relatively easy for those so inclined to follow along with the legislative budget deliberations already underway.
Governor Lingle’s proposed supplemental budget is available in summary form and in full, along with questions and answers from budget director Georgina Kawamura, all on the governor’s web site.
Budget presentations from state departments are currently being made during an ongoing series of budget briefings for the House Finance and Senate Ways & Means committees. Those prepared statements can be found via links on the publicly posted hearing notices. Click here for the notices of upcoming hearings, or browse the full listing of pre-session hearings, including those already concluded.
For example, here’s the hearing notice for Tuesday’s briefing by the Council on Revenues, which provides links to the briefing materials.
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One of the key elements in the budget process is MIA — and long overdue. That’s the variance report. It’s supposed to be issued by the end of November each year. It shows exactly how much each agency spent the previous fiscal year, comparing that against what was budgeted. It also shows how much was spent the first quarter of this fiscal year, again comparing that to what was budgeted (it should be around 25 percent of total allocation, in most cases). But Budget & Finance has not prepared this document. When I asked about that, I was told that final allocations for FY 2010 had not yet been given to departments, so the variance report could not be completed. Yet there is no reason why we should not be given the figures for 2009 FY, which closed out more than six months ago. How is the Legislature to know how to budget for 2011 without even knowing what was spent and by whom in FY 2009?