Tag: H-3

Accomplishments During Chairmanship of the OHA Board of Trustees

By: Trustee Rowena Akana, Chairman
October, 2000

Source: Kai Wai Ola o OHA

With all of the battles, sword crossing, and legal maneuvering this Hawaiian agency has experienced during the last few months, it is important that we not lose sight of the positives that the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has accomplished.

Our office has been instrumental in reaching the Native Hawaiian community and serving the beneficiaries of this trust, despite the hardships that this office has had to endure.

Among the accomplishments achieved during my chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs:

* We created a half-time Community Affairs Coordinator position for Lanai.

* Gladys Brandt became director of OHA’s Education Foundation

* We rectified errors discovered in our investment profile, creating a new income formula

* We passed a policy that required a two-thirds vote for all unbudgeted items

* We established a policy for bonds by which our fixed-income managers would not be allowed to invest in below yield investments

* We approved ll grants totaling $425,428 for projects ranging from transportation to Hawaiian immersion schools to prenatal programs for hapai Hawaiians. Just six months ago, our grants department was nine months behind schedule. Now, it is almost a full year ahead of schedule

* We authorized OHA’s continued participation in the Kukui o Molokai, Inc. water case.

* We signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the state for improvements to the Queen Kaahumanu Highway in Kailua-Kona.

* We voted to appropriate more than $500,000 for the renovation of Ke Kula Niihau o Kekaha immersion school, which will provide classrooms and a cafeteria on Kauai.

* We approved a two-year extension of the administrator’s contract and clarified his responsibilities in order to streamline operations.

* We resolved four workers compensation claims that have been pending for more than a decade.

* We awarded $10,000 to OHA’s Education Foundation for operations.

* We hired a personnel manager to align OHA with accepted employment practices.

* We appropriated more than $500,000 for a legal “dream team” to represent our interests in Rice vs. Cayetano.

* During our trips to Washington DC, we learned of a presidential health directive for Pacific Islanders and Asians. We were instrumental in inserting language into the executive order that added our people to the list of ethnic groups eligible for funds and recognition. The order defines a Pacific Islander as “the aboriginal, indigenous native people of Hawaii and other Pacific Islands within the jurisdiction of the United States.”

* We implemented an investment policy with the purpose of reviewing our trust asset allocations.

* We developed an Individual Development Account Program (IDA).

* We approved a MOA for an H-3 Interpretative Center in collaboration with state and federal governments.

* We approved funds for the Saddle Road MOA improvement project on the Big Island.

* We appropriated $120,000 for the Molokai Dialysis Treatment Center and $7,200 in transitional funds for home kidney dialysis machines.

* We also welcomed former Department of Hawaiian Homelands Director Kali Watson to our ‘ohana as a crucial player in the ceded lands negotiations.

* Preparations continue for the October Puwalu Conference. We want to educate everyone about self-determination. All Hawaiian groups will be invited. We have hired a specialist to assist with this historic event.

* OHA, the Bishop Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution are planning an exhibit in Washington highlighting the history of our people, scheduled for about the time the Supreme Court will hear Rice.

* Our steadfast commitment to our kupuna is the basis for a Native Hawaiian Health Task Force to be implemented by the end of this year.

* We launched a successful initiative in Washington DC, winning Hawaiians and the state the support of US Solicitor General Seth Waxman in Rice vs. Cayetano. He filed one of two dozen briefs urging the Supreme Court to consider constitutional OHA’s election.

* We approved amendments to S. 225, a federal bill extending the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act to Hawaiians.

* We awarded $116,996.00 in grants for Native Hawaiian projects.

* We appropriated $1.2 million to guarantee a loan supporting Hawaii County Department of Water Supply’s application for federal funds for road construction and clearing homestead lots in Kikala-Keokea.

* We approved funds for initiatives in alternative education.

* We voted to support the Dollars-to-Classroom Act.

* We amended the Native Hawaiian Health Care Improvement Act to widen its scope.

* We included in our money monitor’s contract a provision for a “wrapped” fee.
* We resolved our Ho’oulu Mea Kanu native plant project to the ANA for funding.

* We approved more than $574,000 to the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation to assist beneficiaries in bringing claims against the state for the breaches of the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust.

It is my sincere hope that the Hawaiian community will unite during these
extraordinary times. It is important to keep focused on the positive, so that we can continue to strive forward together as a people.

Privatization: Good Deal or Sellout?

By: Trustee Rowena Akana
March 6, 1998

Another Opportunity for the People…. To Lose!!

Governor Ben Cayetano is calling for privatization of the State Historic Preservation Division. His suggestion calls for the firing of Historic Preservation Division staff, and reassigning their work to archaeologists who would be hired by developers to review their work. What a sweetheart deal this is…for the developers and consultants. It will save the State money primarily because the State is removing itself from most of the process, but it sells out their responsibility to monitor and prevent actions that are culturally and environmentally insensitive. These suggestions to “pass the buck” by the Governor, Legislators, and Joe Souki have once again placed the general public and the Hawaiian people in the loser column.

Allowing developers to hire their own hand-picked archeologists is tantamount to saying that all developers are not only honest and honorable, but culturally sensitive to the historic importance of our Aina. Does H-3 ring any alarm bells for you? We have a history of developers trying to brush aside any considerations for the history and culture of these islands.

“Letting developers hire archaeologists to review their projects is like ‘letting the Mafia police the Mafia,'” said Patrick Kirch of the University of California, Berkeley, in a recent Honolulu Advertiser article. Giving this kind of power to developers could lead to abuses that would allow high rise condos and shopping centers to be built on sacred refuges or burial grounds which are so important to Hawaii’s history. This form of privatization has some serious drawbacks, but the greatest concern is that it will diminish the quality of historic preservation work in Hawaii and allow greater destruction of Hawaiian sites and burials for the sake of development. The opportunity for the developer to skew the review in their favor is great since he is the employer of both the consultant doing the study, and the consultant reviewing it for adequacy.

The State has previously shown its tendency to avoid its statutory responsibilities in the handling of the burials program within the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR). For the past two years OHA has funded two positions, including all the fringe benefits, for the burials program although the statutes mandate positions for this program, and the Legislature provides funding for it. Why is OHA funding positions for which the State has responsibility? Perhaps it’s another form of privatizing. Again, the State is passing the buck. There have been attempts to permanently move this program to OHA, but by doing so the program would lose its purpose because OHA has no enforcement powers. Moving this program to OHA would be detrimental to its existence unless the Governor and Legislature work to grant OHA enforcement powers, as required by statute.

In November 1997, I criticized the effort by the Governor and DLNR to privatize small boat harbors. In the article, I pointed out that WestRec Marinas lobbied the Governor and Michael Wilson, hoping to get a consulting agreement with DLNR to manage small boat harbors for the State. My concern then was for the people. What would happen to the local fishermen and the submerged lands in the harbor when boat harbors became privatized?

My concern is still that of the people of this state, and of the Aina. Whether the Governor privatizes the State Historic Preservation Division or the management of small boat harbors more public input is needed before being seriously considered.

Over the last two years I have watched what appears to be a very sinister move on the part of the administration and certain legislators to create commissions and divisions of the State government to divide and parcel out sections of ceded land so as to remove them from the main corpus of ceded lands. We only have to look at the bills being introduced into the Legislature to see this. Upon statehood in 1959, the State Constitution named two beneficiaries of Hawaiian lands: the Native Hawaiians and the general public. Therefore, it is my view that the general public should be as concerned as the Hawaiian people are that the State government does not breach its fiduciary responsibility as trustees to the public land trust. In the 1998 general elections we must tell these legislators that they can no longer mismanage our tax dollars and then cover their tracks with the use of ceded land.