House GOP Package: Education reform, Tax Relief, Drug Treatment Programs

The House Republican caucus unveiled their 2001 legislative package today. The GOP Representatives will be introducing bills on educational reform, tax relief, drug treatment programs and other areas of concern. The major thrust of the House GOP agenda is to enable public schools to maintain a higher level of autonomy.

The key to true autonomy, said the Republicans, is to decentralize the school system by creating district school boards to run the schools with the authority to hire local superintendents who live in the district. The state superintendent would still oversee standards, accountability, and revenue distribution. Each local school board would be represented on the state board. In addition, the GOP plan calls for insuring that there will be textbooks for every secondary school student and for greater flexibility on hiring school principals.

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The Republican House package also calls for tax reduction for the average citizen through the elimination of the 4 percent general excise tax on food, medical services, and eventually on rent. They believe that the loss in revenues would be more than made up by increased government efficiency and by reducing the government workforce through attrition.

A third major area of concern to the Republicans is the crisis Hawaii faces from the problems of drug addiction. They intend to support effective prevention and drug treatment programs paid for by tobacco settlement funds. They will also support the construction and operation of a secure, privately run, drug treatment facility that will reduce recidivism rates and the local demand for drugs.

Other proposals in the package include:

• An omnibus environmental measure that will use traffic fines to fix environmental degradation, develop renewable energy sources, preserve open space, and reduce pollution;

• Measures to foster government efficiency by ending duplication in state and county services and by placing collective bargaining at the unit level rather than at the statewide level; and

• Election reform by ending the practice of government contractors contributing large sums of money to those who award those contracts.

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