Abercrombie not retreating from his support for PLDC

The state’s Public Land Development Corp. has not developed its administrative rules, it has no public development projects and its singular achievement appears to be uniting half of the state’s county councils in urging its repeal.

Last week the Kauai County Council voted unanimously to urge the 2013 state Legislature to scrap the idea.

The Hawaii County Council is expected to follow tomorrow with its own rejection of the PLDC law.

The entire Hawaii County Council, meeting as a subcommittee earlier last month, voted to request repeal and later this week to officially record its opposition.

So far the PLDC and its enabling legislation, Act 55, have done little to attract support, except from its sponsors, state Sens. Donavan Dela Cruz and Malama Solomon.

Partially in reaction to the PLDC law, the state Democratic party at its 2012 state convention passed a resolution opposing "government exemptions for environmental protections, regulations and reviews."

Perhaps the PLDC’s biggest supporter has been Gov. Neil Abercrombie.

Over the weekend, Abercrombie wrote to Kauai’s Garden Island newspaper to defend the plan and advise detractors to not think about asking for repeal.

"Calls for repeal are not productive, particularly before projects have even been identified. Such extreme action would only impede the public comment process to which the public is rightly entitled for projects and proposals with great public support," Abercrombie wrote.

The Democratic governor said the PLDC "is one of our best opportunities to work cooperatively and align public and private interests toward the enhancement, protection, conservation and management of public lands for Hawaii’s people."

The state’s more rural areas, such as Kauai and Hawaii island, are more sensitive to any change. The opposition to the Superferry stands as a good example, although the ferry was an actual, functioning object and had its own supporters.

The PLDC is just a concept, so opponents are free to color in all the spaces.

JoAnn Yukimura, Kauai County Council vice chairwoman and former Kauai mayor, called the PLDC "a recipe for disaster.

"It is not charged with the main mission of resource conservation, has no statutory guidelines for keeping decisions aligned with the main mission, and whose main charge is to make money," Yukimura wrote in a letter to the PLDC last month.

Another Kauai political leader, Gary Hooser, who is running for the County Council, said in testimony urging the PLDC’s repeal that the problem with the law is its broad list of exemptions.

Hooser, on leave from his state job as director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control, said any for-profit development on public lands "should absolutely be required to get the necessary permits and to undergo close scrutiny by the public and the public agencies responsible for fundamental health, safety and environmental protection of our community."

As shown by his letter in the Kauai paper, Abercrombie is not giving any ground in his support for the PLDC. He, along with Dela Cruz and Solomon, are urging that the PLDC adopt a "strategic plan" that would spell out "its vision, mission, goals and values."

Back on Kauai, Yukimura says the Abercrombie letter sounds like "he didn’t get the message," and urged that to build trust, the PLDC would have to "delineate actual projects and explain how they would be handled."

The other way, perhaps the simpler way, is to just scrap it and start over.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.