Governor Neil Abercrombie

Embracing Transparency: New Leadership finally comes to OHA

JANUARY 2015 KA WAI OLA COLUMN

`Ano`ai kakou… Happy Year of the Sheep! Big Island Trustee Robert Lindsey has been selected as our new Chairman of the Board. Trustee Dan Ahuna is our Vice-Chair. Trustee John Waihee IV chairs the Beneficiary Advocacy and Empowerment Committee and Trustee Hulu Lindsey chairs the Land and Property Committee.

As many of my readers know, I have worked diligently for many years to make OHA accountable to our beneficiaries and to make our decision making process more transparent. This call for openness has made me very unpopular with the past two OHA Chairs.

After years of having my requests get absolutely nowhere, I was finally forced to file a lawsuit against OHA in September 2013 to make it more transparent. Now that a new leadership team is in place, this lawsuit may no longer be necessary.

As the new Chairperson of the Asset & Resource Management (ARM) Committee (henceforth the “Budget & Finance” Committee), I will oversee all fiscal and budgetary matters and ensure that OHA’s trust fund is properly management.

The Budget & Finance Committee also oversees OHA’s real estate and develops policy on land use, native rights, and natural and cultural resources. It also approves all grants and evaluates OHA programs to decide whether we should continue funding them.

Now that decision making has shifted to a new majority, I feel confident that our beneficiaries will be pleased with the upcoming changes.

EMBRACING TRANSPARENCY

If you haven’t already heard, you may now go to OHA’s website at http://www.oha.org/about/board-trustees to watch live meetings of the OHA Board of Trustees. Be sure to tune in on the days we have our meetings. For a meeting schedule, please call me at (808) 594-0204.

NEW LEGISLATIVE SESSION

Mahalo nui loa to Governor Neil Abercrombie for his constant support of Native Hawaiian issues, which goes all the way back to championing the Akaka bill while he was in Congress. He can take pride in being the Governor that finally made the ceded lands settlement a reality with the transfer of Kakaako Makai to OHA.

I would also like to thank State Senators Malama Solomon and Clayton Hee, and Representative Faye Hanohano for their dedicated service to the Native Hawaiian Community while serving in the state legislature. I wish them well in their future endeavors.

While OHA now has to work even harder to educate the new incoming legislators on unresolved Native Hawaiian issues, I have high hopes that we will have another successful session and get more things done for our beneficiaries.

Aloha Ke Akua.

The need for fiscal responsibility

`Ano`ai kakou… On May, 30, 2012, the Star Advertiser reported that the state Council on Revenues lowered the revenue projection for next fiscal year, which prompted Governor Abercrombie’s administration to cut back the state’s spending.

This is not surprising. When revenues are down, everyone cuts back on spending. Everyone except OHA.

Trustees Keep on Spending

Our new CEO, Ka Pouhana Kamana’opono Crabbe, has been working diligently to cut our budget wherever possible and to streamline operations to save money, but there are still Trustees who insist on spending more.

This extra spending puts enormous pressure on our dwindling resources at a time when OHA has already accepted major financial commitments such as Waimea Valley, ownership of the Kaka’ako Makai Settlement Properties, and other commitments such as the $3 million/per year for 30-years debt service for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and funding for organizations such as Alu Like, Inc. and the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation that have made their way into our annual budget. These are huge amounts of revenues being contracted to these entities. Add to this the grants and annual operational expenses and we are maxed out.

A Constant Issue

Overspending has been a longstanding problem at OHA. In April of 2004, our money committee chair asked for a legal opinion that would allow OHA to spend more of the Native Hawaiian Trust Fund. He even questioned whether it’s even appropriate to build the Trust at all.

I have consistently argued against OHA’s 5% spending policy and strongly recommended that it be reduce instead to 4%, at least until the economy fully recovers again. Even Kamehameha Schools operates at a lower spending rate than 5%.

Fiscal Restraint

In these tough economic times, there are nearly a hundred nonprofit organizations asking for OHA grants each year. While giving the money away will make OHA very popular in the short-term, we should be focusing on the long-term health of the Native Hawaiian Trust Fund.

We have worked carefully for two decades to build the Trust to over $300 million. I would hate to see this relatively modest amount shrink down to nothing in shortsighted spending sprees that forces us to realign our budget several times a year and draw more money from our corpus (trust). What other organization does this?

Greater Transparency

State law (Hawaii Revised Statutes §10-14.5 on budget preparation and submission; auditing, Section b) requires that: “The (OHA) board shall provide opportunities for beneficiaries in every county to participate in the preparation of each biennial and supplemental budget of the office of Hawaiian affairs. These opportunities shall include an accounting by trustees of the funds expended and of the effectiveness of programs undertaken.”

I have recommended time and time again that OHA needs to take its proposed budget out to the community so that our beneficiaries can give us their input as well as tell us what their needs are.

This was the common practice of OHA in the past and I believe it helped OHA to develop a budget that was more in-sync with our beneficiaries’ concerns.

I will continue to press OHA’s money committee chair to take our next proposed budget out to the community, as required by law, including the neighbor islands.

So which path will OHA’s leadership take?

It has long been understood that OHA is a “temporary” organization that will someday be dissolved and its assets transferred over to the new Hawaiian Nation.

So the critical policy question is: “Will OHA continue to be a ‘temporary’ organization that will give the Hawaiian Nation the assets it needs to survive or will OHA continue to spend freely and shrink the Trust Fund?”

OHA desperately needs Trustees who will make the tough decision to focus on building towards a more permanent, long-term goal instead of taking the easy and popular path of short-sighted spending.

In this election year, OHA beneficiaries should look carefully at the candidates running for OHA Trustee and choose individuals who will take OHA in a more fiscally responsible direction.

What has been sorely lacking is for Trustees to prioritize our spending and focus on the things that our beneficiaries need and NOT use OHA’s “Strategic Plan,” which is at best a wish list of too many things and does not focus on the top priorities of our people.

NOT listing priorities leaves the door wide open for certain Trustees to continue to fund anything and everything while neglecting meaningful programs in healthcare and housing.

As long as trustees keep drawing money out of our corpus, or trust fund, we are taking money away from future generations of Hawaiians. After all, what is a nation without assets? Aloha Ke Akua.

2011 Wrap-up

January 2012 KA WAI OLA COLUMN

`Ano`ai kakou… I started off 2011 with a continued hope that there will be positive changes at OHA. While not always positive, the year was definitely one of major transition for OHA as we: (1) Approved a monumental law which will establish State Recognition for Native Hawaiians; and (2) Received an offer from the Governor to finally resolve the claims relating to OHA’s portion of income from the public land trust between 11/7/1978 and 7/1/2009.

STATE RECOGNITION

After being one of two Trustees appointed as a “Legislative Liaison” representing OHA for the 2011 session, I focused my many years of lobbying experience and strong relationships with legislators on two important issues: (1) Establishing state recognition for Native Hawaiians; and (2) Resolving the past due ceded land payments from the state.

Thanks to the hard work of the Native Hawaiian Caucus, Senate Bill (SB) 1520 was approved by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Neil Abercrombie. SB1520 establishes a new law that recognizes Native Hawaiians as the only indigenous, aboriginal, Maoli people of Hawaii. It also establishes a process for Native Hawaiians to organize themselves as a step in the continuing development of a reorganized Native Hawaiian governing entity and, ultimately, the federal recognition of Native Hawaiians.

A special Mahalo to Senators Malama Solomon, Clayton Hee, and Brickwood Galuteria, and Representative Faye Hanohano for their tireless effort to get SB 1520 passed into law.

PAST DUE CEDED LANDS SETTLEMENT

In the 2009, SB 995 (Introduced by Senator Colleen Hanabusa by request and supported by Senator Hee) sought to have the State resolve its long overdue debt to OHA resulting from public land trust revenues unpaid from 11/7/1978 to 7/1/2010 by offering OHA $251 million in cash and 20 percent of the 1.8 million acres of ceded lands. The proposal died in the House and went nowhere in 2010. In the 2011 Legislative Session, SB 984, part of the OHA Package of bills, died after it was deferred by the Senate Hawaiian Affairs and Judiciary committees.

However, on Nov. 16, 2011, Governor Neil Abercrombie offered OHA property in Kaka‘ako as payment to cover the settlement of past due amounts. The Governor should be commended for his bold offer. OHA has lobbied many Governors in the past with nothing to show for it. Now, for the first time, Governor Abercrombie is making OHA an offer that could potentially generate all of the revenue OHA needs to operate indefinitely and would give our future nation the concrete assets it needs to serve the Hawaiian population.

Although there is a lot work ahead of us in the upcoming legislative session, I feel more confident than ever that OHA, on behalf of our beneficiaries, will finally prevail. An important part of that will be educating our elected officials and the community about this opportunity.

OHA must also do everything in its power to successfully lobby the State Legislature and convince any naysayers to have a change of heart. In this effort, we will need your support to effectively solidify the settlement. OHA will be taking this proposal to community meetings around the state so that our beneficiaries will understand it. I look forward to 2012 with great hope and anticipation that our efforts to resolve this long standing issue will finally be put to rest.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a most prosperous New Year.