Lawmakers covet land at schools for revenue

With the Public Land Development Corp. stuck in political quicksand, state lawmakers are returning to the narrower idea of redeveloping land around public schools to generate new revenue for the state.

Lawmakers are drafting a bill that would create an education facilities trust that could lease out underutilized public school land for workforce housing or other commercial projects. The state would use the money from redevelopment to modernize public schools with broadband and other infrastructure that is part of the Information Age.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie has called for schools to be modernized in his "New Day" agenda, and the concept is being driven by many of his key allies, including William Kaneko, his campaign manager and an attorney who leads the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs.

Lawmakers are also considering a less ambitious three-year pilot project, potentially overseen by Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui’s office, that would allow development leases on a few public school properties to determine whether the concept is viable before applying it statewide.

Mindful of the backlash against the PLDC, lawmakers will carefully review whether redevelopment on public school land should entail broad exemptions from land use, planning and zoning laws.

Rep. Roy Takumi (D, Pearl City-Waipio-Pearl Harbor), chairman of the House Education Committee, said the idea is to create mixed-use projects that include modern public schools and commercial development such as affordable rental housing or health clinics. He said the PLDC, by contrast, is "on steroids" and has rightfully encountered community pushback.

"I know some people from the get-go will say, as a fundamental principle, ‘Well, any land grab I’m opposed to,’" he said, even though he does not characterize the concept of redeveloping public school land that way.

Sen. Jill Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe), chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, is interested in a pilot project.

"It’s about creating schools that we know will match the way we’re going to be teaching for the future," she said. "It’s different. It’s not the plantation-style campuses that we built 50 years ago. And to do that requires money. And that’s not what we’ve got right now. We’ve got to look for new revenue streams. So the idea was that you’ve got a land base here that potentially can draw revenue, create revenue, to help us repair and maintain and build 21st-century schools."

Tokuda said a pilot project would show "proof of concept," adding, "I think to be smart about it you’ve got to see how this would even work and tick and tock as an animal."

A public school land trust bill was debated in 2011 but was refined into a pilot project by the time it reached a House and Senate conference committee, where the bill stalled. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources initially cautioned that it may be unfair to use public land to benefit a single state interest — public education — at the expense of other interests, such as Native Hawaiians. The department also warned that the commission that would have governed the trust was "akin to a development authority" but did not have the special powers granted to other development authorities, which could hamper its success.

The city administration initially objected to the bill because a significant portion of public schools on Oahu sit on land owned by the county, although later drafts would have provided counties with real property taxes from non-school-related development. The state Department of Education said the concept may generate considerable concern in communities worried about whether local schools would be targets for redevelopment.

The Legislature and Abercrombie instead approved the creation of the PLDC, the development arm of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and gave the new corporation broad exemptions from land use, planning and zoning laws.

While opponents of the PLDC have since sought to blame individual lawmakers, the governor and development interests for the exemptions in the law, it was the DLNR that had complained that the most serious impediment to developing public land was environmental review laws, public land management laws, and the "costly and time-consuming zoning and building requirements set by the counties." The department specifically cited the special powers granted to the Agribusiness Development Corp., the Hawaii Community Development Authority and the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands as examples of the kind of regulatory relief necessary for the PLDC to succeed.

Protests from environmental, labor and some Native Hawaiian groups have prompted Abercrombie and William Aila, the DLNR director, to slow down the administrative rules process needed before any projects are developed through the PLDC.

Many of the same lawmakers who overwhelmingly approved the PLDC two years ago are now discussing either repealing the law or significantly reducing the PLDC’s powers.

On Wednesday, opening day of the new legislative session, activists are planning a rally at the state Capitol called "A Million Little Fists" to call attention to issues such as the PLDC and genetically modified food.

The toxic political climate surrounding the PLDC, which for many activists has become a symbol of big government and corporate greed, could make a rational policy discussion on an education facilities trust or pilot project difficult.

Sen. Laura Thielen (D, Hawaii Kai-Waimanalo-Kailua), a former DLNR director who has recommended that the PLDC be disbanded, said the reaction may depend on whether an education facilities trust would have exemptions from public land management, land use and zoning laws. She also said questions would likely be raised about what would happen to the schools on the properties identified for redevelopment. Would the land be subdivided and the schools either kept separate or closed, she asked, or would the schools become components of commercial projects?

"When you talk about redeveloping to raise money on school property, how is that going to work?" she said.

Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz (D, Wheeler-Wahiawa-Schofield), one of the lawmakers behind the PLDC who has been critical of the way the law has been implemented, said proposals to redevelop underused public school land show that the concept at the core of the PLDC has merit.

"Their efforts reiterate the fact that we need new ways of generating revenues to support needed programs without raising taxes," he said.