By: Trustee Rowena Akana
May, 1997
Source: Star Bulletin; Letters to Editor
Your editorials on state OHA payments from the airport fund continue to ignore the unfortunate reality of government’s slipshod accounting and disbursement methods.
Conspicuously omitted from your bias is the FAA’s conclusion that the state had misused airport funds for a whole gamut of illegal purposes — race tracks, highways and so forth.
Your newspaper has yet to inform the public about how this whole incident occurred. Furthermore, you have never demanded an accounting for the ceded land income pouring into the state general fund.
How does the state spend the sovereign income, 100 percent of which is thrown into some state pot? How is the state’s 80 percent of ceded land revenues being spent?
Why did the state decide to pay OHA’s share out of a federal grant intended for airports when it has the ceded land revenue stream?
If the right questions were asked, I suspect you might find that the same irresponsible practices that led to OHA payments from airport funds also caused our state’s terrible fiscal straits.