The Public Land Development Corp. heard another torrent of criticism Tuesday as it attempts to adopt administrative rules that would allow the new agency to launch projects.
Dozens of people used a public hearing on a new draft of the rules, like hearings on previous drafts, to denounce the PLDC as a potential land grab by developers that could threaten the environment and native culture. Instead of offering suggestions on the rules, most of the people at the nearly four-hour hearing called for the Legislature to repeal the law that created the agency in 2011.
"Good planning is not a burden. It is a requirement," said Martha Townsend, executive director of The Outdoor Circle. "Good public engagement is not a burden. It’s a requirement."
Lloyd Haraguchi, the PLDC’s executive director, said staff could present the administrative rules to the agency’s five-member board at a meeting later this month. But Haraguchi, responding to criticism that the new draft should also be subject to public hearings on the neighbor islands, would not rule out additional hearings.
The PLDC, the development arm of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, could partner with the private sector to develop public land and generate revenue for the state. The agency is exempt from land use and county zoning laws.
Many environmental, progressive, Native Hawaiian and labor advocates have condemned the PLDC and have made a repeal an objective.
The new rules describe projects that would have value and significance to the community or would help preserve culture, agriculture and conservation, but opponents suspect that luxury development projects are secretly being planned.
State Sen. Laura Thielen (D, Hawaii Kai-Waimanalo-Kailua), a former DLNR director, said the PLDC does not need exemptions from land use and county zoning laws to redevelop or improve public land. The new draft of rules, she said, also removes a provision that would have required projects to follow existing laws, charter provisions and ordinances.
"This board has confirmed the need for the Legislature to take up Act 55 (the PLDC) again and either repeal it or significantly amend it because we cannot rely on the board or the staff to adopt good governance processes," she said.
Kika Bukowski, executive director of the Hawaii Building and Construction Trades Council, said that some of the projects may not require exemptions, "but what it does require, that we lack, is funding. And that’s what the PLDC is partially intended to provide, that mechanism to provide creative financing through private-public partnerships."
Keiko Bonk, an environmental advocate who lost a state House campaign last week as a Green Party candidate, testified on behalf of her mother, Fumi Bonk, who was sitting in a wheelchair in the front row of the small meeting room.
Bonk described the PLDC as a "developer plot" that "goes against every process that we have in place in Hawaii."
Bonk asked her mother whether she had anything else to say to the PLDC. "God damn you," Fumi Bonk said to cheers.
