Abercrombie Targets $104 Million to Hawaii

Washington, D.C. -- The U.S. House today approved a package of 2009 Appropriation bills that former President Bush had threatened to veto during deliberations last year.  When the Bush White House tried to force deep cuts in energy research, healthcare, education, law enforcement and biomedical research, Congress rejected the cuts and simply funded all federal agencies and departments at the previous year’s level.  

"The funding provided by these bills was carefully considered to make up for reckless budget cuts that put many essential public services at great risk,"  said Rep. Neil Abercrombie.  "The $104 million I was able to target to Hawaii comes within particular agency or department annual budgets.  Our specific projects have been reviewed and evaluated by the Appropriations Committee and selected for funding."

Hawaii projects funded in the bill include:

• $20 million to the State Dept of Transportation for preliminary engineering for initial transit design and development of more refined capital cost estimates;
• $33.3 million for Native Hawaiian Education;
• $14.2 million for Native Hawaiian Healthcare;
• $7 million to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to acquire land for the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge;
• $7.3 million for three different renewable energy research projects;
• $4.6 million for marine research into the management of resources in coral and undersea ecosystems and Monk Seal recovery;
• $1.4 million for tropical aquaculture research at the Oceanic Institute; and
• $10 million for Native Hawaiian housing in the Hawaiian Home Lands. 
  

Together with $10.2 million in Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Block Grants in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the economic recovery package passed by Congress less than two weeks ago, the $10 million in the 2009 HUD Appropriation approved today effectively doubles this year’s funding for Native Hawaiian housing.

Other Hawaii projects in the legislation include funding for the Honolulu Police Department’s Crime Lab. The Honolulu Police Department has the only full forensic laboratory in the state, and in addition to HPD, it serves the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and several branches of the military, state agencies, city agencies and Guam, Saipan and Micronesia. 

There is also funding to continue the Hawaii Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted Hawaii inmates. Nationally, such programs have investigated and retried cases for more than 190 people who had been wrongly convicted, including 14 on death row.  There is also funding for environmental investigations of the Ala Wai Canal and Wailupe Stream.

"Some self-appointed government watchdog groups in Washington consider the investment of public funds for public purposes to be pork," Abercrombie said. "I’ll leave it to the people of Hawaii to decide if a modern mass transit system, education, healthcare, energy independence, adequate housing, effective tools for law enforcement and clean water are pork."

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