{"id":157833,"date":"2022-04-19T16:00:07","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T02:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=157833"},"modified":"2026-04-23T10:45:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:45:49","slug":"legislative-update-senate-budget-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2022\/04\/19\/legislative-update-senate-budget-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative update: Senate budget includes UH<\/abbr> request and more"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 11<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

\"Hawaii<\/p>\n

Kalbert Young<\/strong>, UH<\/abbr> vice president for budget and finance and chief financial officer, shares his analysis of the UH<\/abbr> budget as it goes through the 2022 Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> State Legislative session.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Young\"
Kalbert Young<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are two more weeks left in the 2022 legislative session as the House of Representatives and the Senate have begun to negotiate differences on their budget bills and other measures that have survived to this point. The outcomes of these Conference Committee meetings will ultimately decide funding for programs, departments and agencies across the state, including the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>.<\/p>\n

In my last update, I provided a summary of the House draft of the budget bill<\/a> (HB<\/abbr> 1600 HD<\/abbr>1) that crossed over from the House to the Senate on March 17. The Senate Committee on Ways and Means has since passed its budget draft, HB<\/abbr> 1600 HD1 SD2<\/abbr> and sent it back to the House. The Legislature has until April 29 to finish their conference committee meetings and craft a final version of the budget.<\/p>\n

I am pleased to report that both the House and the Senate budgets include the vast majority of our primary budget request this legislative session, the restoration of about $42.5 million in funds cut last year. The lone exception is that the Senate did not restore $1,080,000 of funding to UH<\/abbr> West Oʻahu<\/span>. There are other concerns.<\/p>\n

The Senate draft of the budget bill includes 23 provisos specifically related to UH<\/abbr> that place restrictions, requirements and\/or conditions on the funding. This represents the most provisos I have ever seen attached to the budget.<\/p>\n

The Senate draft also provides funds to significantly more individual items compared to the House draft. While funding is always appreciated, the vast majority of these items were not requested by the Board of Regents or UH<\/abbr> Administration, so are considered legislative initiatives. The driving reasons for the increase in funding to UH<\/abbr> is to satisfy federal Maintenance of Effort requirements (more on that shortly) and because State tax revenues are coming in above forecasted levels. That means there are a lot of State funds that the Legislature is trying to deploy.<\/p>\n

My team has created a table that compares the total general fund budgets for each of the campuses in the board, governor, House and Senate versions of the budget, and the dozens of added items and provisos. Due to its length, it has been placed at the end of this online message.<\/p>\n