The Department of Land and Natural Resources, the state’s first line of defense against environmental and ecological depredations, has been hit hard over the last two years with blows to its budget. In light of the serious budget shortfalls that Hawai`i has faced over the same period, this can hardly be news.
But what is new is the ability to see just how devastating those blows have been. That is, finally, possible now that the state Department of Budget and Finance has released, in quick succession, the variance reports for fiscal years 2009 and 2010. (Although the variance report is supposed to be completed each year by November 30, the Lingle administration did not release the 2009 variance report until September of 2010, nearly 11 months after it was due.)*
The annual reports provide a comparison between the budget given to a state agency and the actual amount spent. They are supposed to be released in advance of the start of legislative hearings on budget requests for the coming year. They are also, and maybe more significantly, the only means the public has of obtaining information on agency spending in a relatively detailed but accessible manner.
For the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the comparisons between budget and expenditures for both fiscal years are grim indeed.
In FY 2009, $110 million in operating funds was budgeted for the DLNR; $93 million was spent. For FY 2010, the gap was even greater: $104.7 million budgeted, $81.3 million spent.
The state’s total operating budget for FY 2009 was $10.789 billion; of that, it spent $8.872 billion, or 82 percent. The DLNR’s spending rate of 85 percent was slightly ahead of the curve that year. In FY 2010, when the operating budget was $10.804 billion, total expenditures were $9.350 billion, or 87 percent. The DLNR’s rate of 77 percent for this period was well below average.
Other state agencies addressing environmental or natural resource issues fared even worse:
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•In FY 2010 the Department of Agriculture was given a budget of $40.6 million; amount spent was just $26.3 million, or 65 percent. Looking at the DOA’s quarantine program, the discrepancy grows still further. Of $13.966 million budgeted for this agency, the state’s first line of defense against invasive species, just $7.78 million – 56 percent – was spent.
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•The Department of Health’s environmental management program (responsible for regulating wastewater, solid waste, safe drinking water, coastal water quality, and air pollution) had an operating budget of $256.621 million for FY 2009. Of that, it spent $149.767 million, for a cut of 42 percent. It dropped below that for FY 2010, spending just $165 million of its $362 million budget, a reduction of 54 percent.
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•The Office of Planning, which has responsibility for the Coastal Zone Management program among many other important environmental review functions, had a budget of $7.018 million in FY 2009; of that, it spent $2.43 million, or 35 percent – or, in other words, it suffered cuts of 65 percent.
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•One agency, the Department of Human Services, saw its 2009 expenditures slashed by nearly three-quarters. Amount budgeted: $1.878 billion; amount spent: $495 million.
Some agencies suffered blows far less cruel. For FY 2009, these included the Office of the Governor (cuts equal to 12 percent), the Office of the Lieutenant Governor (2 percent), the Department of Public Safety (4 percent), and the Department of Education (6 percent). One agency saw a huge increase in its spending over its budget: the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, which includes the state’s unemployment compensation program, saw its spending rise in FY 2009 to $514,559 million, or $215,174 million over what had been budgeted.
Furloughs and Freezes
Accompanying the data on expenses, each agency also reports on the number of authorized positions versus actual hires, lists certain performance goals it planned to meet versus actual achievements, and provides a narrative that is supposed to explain the discrepancies between them.
The greatest differences are almost always between the authorized positions and actual hires. These are usually explained in terms of the hiring freezes imposed by the governor. Also, because the bulk of most agencies’ expenses goes toward personnel, much of the difference between actual and budgeted expenses can be accounted for by the furloughs imposed by Governor Linda Lingle in an effort to bring spending more in line with revenues.
Thus, in the case of the DLNR, although its authorized position count in FY 2009 was 803.5, the number of active employees came to 677, a difference of 16 percent. In FY 2010, the number of authorized positions was reduced by 5 percent, to 767, even as the number of actual employees increased, to 703, for a ratio of 91 percent, authorized hires to actual ones. (This does not count the dozens of temporary hires employed by the department, many of whom work for years in key positions without accruing the benefits or entitlements of civil servants.)
For the current fiscal year (FY 2011), the number of authorized positions fell further, to 739.50. But as of September 30, marking the end of the first quarter of the FY 2011, the DLNR had just 646 full-time permanent employees, or 87 percent of those authorized.
Despite the vacancies, a glance at the DLNR’s online job postings show just two active recruitments: co-manager for the state of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Monument and an archaeologist IV for the Historic Preservation Division. Neither is a civil service post. On December 28, the Department of Human Resources Development’s online list of employment opportunities included the positions of administrator of the DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources (vacant since Dan Polhemus left last spring), a deputy registrar for the department’s Bureau of Conveyances, and a Division of Forestry and Wildlife tech on Lana`i. The empty position of DOCARE chief was not advertised on any site.
Restoration?
The 2011-12 budget – the last one prepared by the Lingle administration – proposes increasing the number of permanent positions to 749 but cutting the operating budget by $2.2 million, to $102.5 million.
When compared to the state’s total operating budget of $10.87 billion for FY 2012, the DLNR’s budget amounts to nine-tenths of one percent. This is in line with its position over the last decade.
Last month, Governor Abercrombie announced that he would be revising the budget, with the new spending plan to be delivered to the Legislature sometime next month. At present, the home page of the Department of Budget and Finance still has posted the 2011-2013 biennium budget prepared by the Lingle administration. To review this, please visit its website: www.hawaii.gov/budget
*Environment Hawai`i made repeated requests to Budget and Finance for the variance report for 2009, starting soon after the report was due. With no response, we requested the information on spending from the DLNR directly and were informed, as late as July 2010, that the information was “still in draft form and has not yet been finalized.” The 2009 variance report was taken off the department’s website when the 2010 report was posted. According to a department employee, the Budget and Finance website does not have the capacity for both the 2010 and 2009 variance reports. Anyone wanting a copy of the 2009 report, however, may request a CD from the department, a B&F employee stated.
Patricia Tummons
Volume 21, Number 8 — February 2011
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