Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi has vetoed parts of the city budget to restore funding to the city’s Office of Economic Revitalization, but the Honolulu City Council may decide to override that action.
The council slashed funding for OER when it passed the city’s $5 billion budget earlier this month. Citing a recent city audit criticizing the office’s performance in improving Oʻahu’s economy, the council cut about 20 staff and $2 million from OER’s budget.
The office was established in 2020 by the council to help Oʻahu respond to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was also given a long-term task to facilitate the island’s economic development.
Blangiardi line-item vetoed those cuts, saying OER has helped thousands of individuals, businesses and farms grow and recover from recent disasters, including the Kona low storms earlier this year.
“At a time when affordability and cost-of-living rank amongst our residents’ most important issues, your decision to end OER’s efforts signals loudly and clearly that the Council is not committed to the economic well-being of the very residents it was elected to serve,” Blangiardi said in a letter to the council accompanying his budget vetoes.
The council’s already pushed back. It argued that the mayor might not have the legal standing to restore OER’s funding.
Council Chair Tommy Waters said the city charter only gives the mayor the ability to reduce or eliminate funding through his veto power, but he cannot add funding to a program or agency that way.
“The mayor says this veto puts money back into the Office of Economic Revitalization. Nothing in the City’s Charter appears to allow for that,” Waters said in a written statement. “The mayor has also stated that if these cuts were to stand, he would ultimately find the money for OER internally, an effort that would have to be outside the budget process.”
Waters added that the vetoed budget appears unbalanced. He said, “The funds restored appear to exceed what was reduced.”
Regardless, the council may look to override Blangiardi’s line-item vetoes as the simplest approach to undo Blangiardi’s line-item vetoes.
The nine-member group can do that if it can round up six votes to support the override. That’s not an unlikely scenario, as the council passed the budget without OER funding with a 6-3 vote.
During the budget’s final hearing, local organizations and the public testified overwhelmingly in support of restoring OER funding, praising the office’s work.
But Waters and other lawmakers note the office, since its inception, has been given $324 million in funding from private and public sources without producing results, and that the money should instead go to programs and services with a proven track record.
“This is not about ending economic development. It is about making sure public money goes to services that work and that residents can rely on,” Waters said in his statement.
The council’s hearing on the vetoed budget items on July 8.
