In a recent TV commercial, former Hawaii First Lady Vicky Cayetano lists a set of reasons as to why her husband, Ben Cayetano, should be elected Honolulu mayor.

“As governor, Ben was responsible for a budget seven times larger than the city’s, and he left it with a surplus,” she said. “He reorganized state government, reduced costs, stood up to special interest groups and reduced your state income tax. Ben stands for fiscal responsibility, trust and honesty.”

Can Ben Cayetano lay claim to those accomplishments?

To find out, we first got in touch with Hawaii’s Department of Budget and Finance.

Luis Salaveria, the department’s deputy director, had immediate access to budget data from 2002 — Cayetano’s last year as governor. In that year the City and County of Honolulu’s operating budget was about $1.08 billion. The state’s was $7.07 billion, or about 6.5 times larger than that for the city.

When asked whether Cayetano left the state with a budget surplus, Salaveria said the answer depended on how one calculates a budget.

Looking only at Cayetano’s last year in office, the state actually had a deficit in 2002. With revenues of $7.56 billion and expenses of $7.99 billion that year, the state was in debt by $429 million, said Salaveria.

But if the calculation also includes carryover monies from the previous year — which is how state lawmakers evaluate the budget — then the state had a surplus of $2.58 billion.

Here are Salaveria’s equations:

• Revenues ($7.56 billion) – Expenses ($7.99 billion¹) = -$429 million
• [Revenues ($7.56 billion) + Carryover ($3.01 billion)] – Expenses ($7.99 billion) = $2.58 billion

Restructuring Government

Vicky Cayetano also states that her husband reorganized state government.

Hawaii’s economy during Cayetano’s initial term as governor was in shambles, making government efficiency — through restructuring — one of his top priorities. “People were hurting economically all over the state,” he wrote in his 2009 memoir.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1997 published the results of a government accountability project that evaluated the initial performance of Cayetano’s administration. The POP Accountability Project, as it was called, followed up on promises Cayetano made during his campaign for governor by comparing them to actions he took thereafter.

Contents of the project, titled “The Cayetano Record,” were divided up by issue area. One of those issues was “Government Restructuring.”

The report shows that during his first year in office Cayetano was able to pass through the Legislature several government reorganization initiatives. Most of the changes entailed agency realignment, according to the report.

In the first year the state consolidated divisions within the departments of Labor and Industrial Relations and Land and Natural Resources and reassigned several functions among various other departments.

Cayetano in 1996 also signed into law a Senate bill that established policies for the reorganization of state government. The measure called for the consolidation of administrative departments and departments with business-related functions.

Reducing Costs

The former First Lady also says in the commercial that Cayetano reduced costs.

The POP report outlines a number of cost-reduction measures that Cayetano oversaw in his first two years as governor.

Here are some examples, all of which are taken from the report:

• Cayetano’s administration moved 300 inmates to Texas to reduce costs. When Cayetano was governor, it cost nearly twice as much to house an inmate in Hawaii than it did in Texas.
• Cayetano strongly supported and then signed into law Act 261, which created the Hawaii Employers Mutual Insurance Company. The nonprofit insurance company replaced another assigned risk pool and was meant to lower costs.
• Cayetano’s administration gave the Hawaii Beef Packers Inc. a lease allowing it to operate its own slaughterhouse and livestock processing facility, which reduced transportation costs for ranchers.
• Cayetano in 1995 announced that the private sector would take over the printing of a handbook, which saved the state $20,000 in printing costs.

Taking on Special Interests

Another accomplishment that Vicky Cayetano attributes to her husband is taking a stand against special interests.

The former governor famously “stood up” to a special interest group in 2001. That group was the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA), which for nearly a month that year went on strike when contract negotiations fell flat.

Cayetano’s administration refused to settle for HSTA’s contract proposal, which would’ve cost the state roughly $200 million. Ultimately, HSTA and the governor’s administration settled on a two-year contract deal of which 85 percent of teachers approved.

Cutting Income Taxes

Lastly, Vicky Cayetano says that her husband cut state income taxes.

Civil Beat has already published two fact checks investigating Ben Cayetano’s approach to state income-tax rates. We’ve verified that the former governor cut income taxes and that those tax cuts applied to all income tax brackets.

BOTTOM LINE: The Department of Budget and Finance’s Luis Salaveria confirmed that, in Ben Cayetano’s last year as governor, he managed a state budget that was roughly seven times the size of the city’s budget. Salaveria also said that, carryover funds included, Hawaii was left with a budget surplus of $2.58 billion. Archived news reports detail how Cayetano reorganized government and reduced costs. The 2001 teachers strike offers one example of how Cayetano “stood up to special interest groups.” And Civil Beat has already confirmed through investigation that the former governor reduced state income taxes. We find Vicky Cayetano’s statements to be TRUE.