Toppled after 28 years at OHA, Rowena Akana says she was a target

Rowena Akana won a seat on the Office of Hawaiian Affairs board of trustees in 1990 and was re-elected seven straight times stretching across three decades.

The winning streak came to a halt Tuesday night when Akana lost in the general election, the victim, she says, of negative publicity from “trumped up charges” brought against her by the state Ethics Commission and aired in public just two weeks before the election.

“My lawyers asked for a hearing for months. All of a sudden, it was scheduled for two weeks before the election. Do you think that is an accident?” she said in an interview Wednesday.

After finishing third in the at-large voting in the August primary, Akana dropped to fifth in Tuesday’s final. She still captured more than 101,000 votes, but it was nearly 5,000 short of landing among the top three at-large candidates who qualified for office.

Incumbents John Waihee IV and Lei Ahu Isa finished first and second in the at-large race, followed by challenger Brendon Kalei‘aina Lee, president of the Kamehameha Schools Alumni Association, who served as chairman of the ‘Aha Hawaiian constitutional convention.

The non-qualifiers were former state Land Board Chairman William Aila, who finished some 2,500 votes behind Lee, followed by Akana and then former state Rep. Faye Hanohano of Hawaii island.

Kalei Akaka, the granddaughter of the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, handily won the Oahu seat, while Carmen Hulu Lindsey recaptured her Maui seat.

As is usual for OHA elections, the blank votes far outnumbered the actual votes. While Waihee, the son of former Gov. John Waihee, captured the highest number of OHA votes at nearly 147,000, blank votes exceeded 529,000.

On Wednesday Akana became emotional as she recalled her 28-year record on the board, a period during which she helped OHA invest and grow a $30 million settlement with the Waihee administration 25 years ago into $400 million to help Native Hawaiians.

She also recalled how she successfully lobbied for a tax break for needy families on kuleana parcels and pushed for health care for National Guardsmen returning from the Middle East.

But Akana has a history of clashing with fellow trustees and OHA managers with an aggressive style.

And she has not been afraid to take her complaints to court — including in 2013 when she filed suit accusing trustees of violating the state’s Sunshine Law in its $21 million acquisition of the former Gentry Pacific Design Center, now the location of OHA’s headquarters.

Akana said she became an election-year target after, as board chairwoman, she tried to get the trustees to fire CEO Kamana‘opono Crabbe and then went to the state Attorney General’s Office with information about alleged corruption within OHA.

Akana said her OHA rivals, including Crabbe, conspired to bring the ethics complaints to the Ethics Commission and have the contested case hearing scheduled at the worst time for negative exposure — when she should have been out campaigning.

Akana is facing ethics charges ranging from accepting a $72,000 cash gift to help pay for legal fees to using her trustee allowance to pay for food and buy home cable television services, a Hawaiian Airlines Premier Club membership and an Apple iTunes gift card.

She denied and defended herself against the charges before the commission, saying she isn’t ashamed of anything.

“It was like a kangaroo court,” she said. “They muddied me up two weeks before the election.”

Crabbe was traveling and could not be reached for comment, according to OHA spokesman Sterling Wong.

A lawsuit filed by Akana against the Ethics Commission is pending in Circuit Court. The suit seeks to overturn the ethics charges, claiming the commission doesn’t have jurisdiction over ceded funds set aside for Native Hawaiians.

Although Akana said she wouldn’t run for the OHA board again, she did vow to remain an active watchdog over the agency.

“I might be able to do more outside the board than inside,” she said. “My goal is to make sure it runs as a trust.”

One of the things she wants to keep an eye on, she said, is the potential for inappropriate development of OHA’s assorted land holdings in Kakaako Makai.