DHHL should enforce its rules

The reason there are rules, especially in complicated dealings, is that fairness, basic understandings and integrity are built into a system. If rules are violated, the violator should be held accountable and sanctioned — not be rewarded by the bending of rules by which everyone else abides.

Alas, warping of rules seems to be occurring over the 125-acre ranching homestead of Flora Solomon, who has a 99-year lease with the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands — and is the mother of state Sen. Malama Solomon.

For more than a decade, Flora Solomon has violated DHHL rules that permit just one residential building plus a workers’ quarters on her lot; at least four houses now exist among nine structures. This is not a ranch lot with one residence, as rules intend; it is a residential compound.

Now, Flora Solomon is seeking Hawaii County approval to subdivide her idyllic Waimea parcel into three smaller, 40-plus-acre lots, each containing at least two existing structures. Instead of cracking down on the violations, landowner DHHL is supporting her move.

Critics are rightly resentful, including Blossom Feiteira, president of the Association of Hawaiians for Homestead Lands, who advocates for beneficiaries waiting for homesteads: "It’s obvious that the department chooses when to bend the rules and when not to. … This absolutely smacks of preferential treatment."

Malama Solomon is a public figure — a veteran politician and prominent member of the Native Hawaiian community — yet she would not comment to Star-Advertiser reporter Rob Perez about this homestead controversy. She should do so publicly to address criticisms of special treatment from DHHL.

Rules are not mere inconveniences to be applied selectively. For DHHL beneficiaries — those with at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood — rules have kept many of them from homestead lots entirely. Some 26,000 have spent years waitlisted for lots that have yet to materialize; some have died after waiting decades.

Then there are cases like the Solomon family. Mala-ma Solomon is among a very select group of les-sees, who, while on DHHL waitlists for homestead lots, have been awarded month-to-month revocable permits for pastoral or agriculture land. (These lots lack infrastructure so are deemed unsuitable for homesteading, but are used for purposes such as ranching.) Malama Solo-mon’s 105-acre ranching parcel, leased since 2000, abuts her mother’s lot.

There should be repercussions for Flora Solo-mon’s decade of land-use violations. But DHHL is overly magnanimous in looking the other way: "If lessees seek the department’s assistance with compliance issues that they are willing to correct," DHHL spokesman Puni Chee said, "the department does its best to work with them to resolve the issues and bring them into compliance."

DHHL’s chronic problems of selective enforcement, sloppy bookkeeping and lax oversight are drawing scrutiny from the U.S. Department of the Interior, which is tightening rules on the agency’s management. DHHL needs to stop its long-standing acts of favoritism to insiders, by fairly administering its own rules for the betterment of all its beneficiaries.

Ultimately, the Solomon homestead situation also raises another issue: If this can be done for Flora Solo-mon, then it should be done for many others. If the redrawing of one 125-acre homestead lot into three smaller lots can be quickly accomplished to benefit a state senator’s family, it can — and certainly should — be quickly accomplished to benefit many other, long-suffering families on DHHL’s waitlists.

DHHL needs to review its entire inventory of lands, with an eye toward fewer 125-acre lots per family, in favor of smaller lots to help more beneficiaries.