Attorney general seeks $2.5 million for security

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, is seeking $2.5 million from the Legislature that he said would be used to respond to potential mass violence or civil disobedience events — and, possibly, demonstrations atop Mauna Kea.

Chin detailed a budget request from his department vaguely called “state security operations” during budget briefings Tuesday before the Senate Ways and Means and Judiciary committees, and the House Finance Committee.

He said the $2.5 million would be used as a contingency fund to coordinate overall response efforts among the state’s law enforcement officers — investigators for the Attorney General’s Office, deputy sheriffs under the Department of Public Safety, and Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement officers under the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

That could include deploying resources on Mauna Kea, where construction of the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope has been stalled since 2015 amid legal challenges and large protests.

When construction was set to begin in 2015, protesters who consider the mountain sacred to Hawaiians repeatedly blocked access to the summit to prevent equipment from reaching the project site. Dozens of protesters were arrested and many have vowed to continue opposing the project, which is tied up in the courts.

Last September, when the state Board of Land and Natural Resources issued a new construction permit for the project, Gov. David Ige said that when construction proceeds, the state would balance the rights of protesters with access rights for TMT’s developers.

Chin did not specify how the requested security funds might be used on the mountain but said in general it would be distributed among state law enforcement agencies for things like overtime, travel and equipment.

“People say, ‘Is that Mauna Kea? Are we talking about security operations for that?’ And the best answer that I can give … is that state security operations could be for an event like a Mauna Kea protest,” Chin said. “It could be for any episode of mass violence or civil unrest or any event that involves official state government leaders or national leaders.”

He said recent national incidents of mass violence have raised concerns about the state’s ability to readily respond to events like the Las Vegas shooting at a country music festival in October and violent clashes at a rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August that promoted white nationalism.

“The idea is that crime overall might actually be more or less dropping, but at the same time you have these very large events that take place that, if there’s no contingency fund to take care of that, then that’s a problem,” Chin said. “This is the classic, ‘You don’t need the money until you need the money.’”

Sen. Laura Thielen questioned how the $2.5 million figure was calculated, noting that it’s similar in size to the entire operating budget for DLNR’s Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement.

“The state law enforcement coalition tried to come up with a budget of what it would take in order to be able to respond to a very large event, hypothetically,” Chin said.

First Deputy Attorney General Russel Suzuki said the office is not seeking a recurring annual appropriation but is looking to establish a contingency that sets aside the $2.5 million for use as needed.

Thielen (D, Hawaii Kai-Waimanalo-Kailua) suggested the department provide more justification for the funding.

“We don’t have very large, hypothetical events every year. So I guess what I’m throwing back at you guys is maybe you can come back with a justification for what might be needed either to seed an account so that there’s funding there, and what might be needed on an annual basis based on prior expenses,” she said.

Thielen said if the Legislature adds the funds into the state’s base budget and it’s not expended, it “would come at an opportunity cost, where we would then not have $2.5 million to put into other programs.”

Lawmakers denied a similar funding request by the attorney general last year, saying the money would be better sought as an emergency appropriation when needed.