DHHL move welcome but more needed

Hopeful observers of the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands might describe the agency’s vote to clean up its troubled system of short-term leases as a necessary move toward professional management of this Native Hawaiian asset. The controversial revocable-permit program has been put on hold while reforms are devised to make it fairer.

By contrast, cynics might call last week’s decision an empty gesture that won’t change anything. If DHHL has failed in its oversight of fiduciary duties to this point, they would counter, what assures anyone that a sea change is in the offing?

The next few months — marked either by corrective steps or inaction — should tell which interpretation will prevail. If DHHL can’t, or won’t, clean up its mess, then its administrators should be held to account.

The department, which manages a legacy land trust to benefit those with at least 50 percent Native Hawaiian ancestry, has been the focus of an ongoing series of investigative reports by the Star-Advertiser’s Rob Perez.

That series, as well as a scathing state audit and some belated attention from federal authorities promising to put rules in place, has unearthed a record of inconsistency in the way the trust has been administered.

Passed by Congress in 1920, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act led to roughly 200,000 acres being set aside for beneficiaries, in the belief that homesteading could help offset the socioeconomic malaise afflicting the indigenous population.

A report that the state auditor released in April assailed DHHL for its execution of the overall mission. The Hawaiian Homes Commission, according to the audit, "fails to meet its fiduciary obligations through its inattention to loan risk guidance," while DHHL’s "lax management of lessee loans undermines its ability to serve all its beneficiaries" by allowing delinquencies to threaten the trust’s solvency.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of the Interior has indicated it would develop rules to govern the trust management. The feds turned over responsibility for its management to the state but rulemaking never happened, as it should have.

Much of the recent scrutiny has focused on DHHL’s revocable permits rather than its long-term leases. These are monthly agreements that, with scant oversight, have become all but permanent arrangements that don’t adequately serve the agency’s beneficiaries.

There were 180 parcels assigned through the permits and, pressed after the series ran to investigate, staffers found that 20 percent of them were in violation of the permit terms. There were charges of favoritism, given that beneficiaries on the waiting list did not get an equitable opportunity to get the permits. Some were held by people who didn’t qualify by blood quantum for a regular lease.

Officials say some of these permits save DHHL money by turning over the costs of parcel upkeep to the tenants. While such management strategies may be rational in some measure, that is not the primary purpose of the trust. It’s to give beneficiaries access to the land and a route to economic self-sufficiency.

The decision to move the tenants to another land-management scheme — similar monthly arrangements called "right-of-entry permits" — makes sense. If the aim is to change the way revocable permits are issued and overseen, it’s cleaner to make the reforms first, and then restart the permit-issuing process.

But there’s action to be taken, and it shouldn’t take an excessive lead time to accomplish. DHHL officials already have found the 20 percent that’s noncompliant; there’s no reason those with a record of flouting the rules should remain on their parcels. Surely there are others on the waiting list who deserve a chance.

And although some of these wheels were set in motion long before the current administration took office, there are certainly DHHL decision-makers who should be held to account.

The agency is about to embark on a series of public hearings about changes that need to be made. Hawaiian homesteaders and the thousands still languishing on the waiting list, however, deserve more than a chance to vent.

If the commission wants to restore good faith with the people it serves, shifts in personnel as well as procedures would help.

DHHL officials make the argument that the agency lacks the funding and staff necessary to do a better job managing land. The Legislature did not favor them with more money last session. If they expect better luck when lawmakers reconvene in January, presenting a detailed blueprint for how they plan to correct their errors might be more persuasive.