Demand plan on how DHHL will use funds
The court has ordered Gov. David Ige to increase funding to cover administrative costs for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, and this week he announced his plans to comply: An increase of $7.5 million is coming to finish out the current fiscal year, and the following year’s allotment would more than double current levels.
This is a significant increase, even if it’s not the amount DHHL has argued in court that it is owed. However, the agency owes something to the taxpaying public, as well — a plan for how it’ll make better use of its resources than has been its past practice.
On Monday, Ige said his proposed allotment represents “the highest level of funding” that the department has ever received from the state.
In fairness, that is damning it with faint praise. Hawaii does have a history of giving the agency short shrift.
Statehood for Hawaii brought with it the mandate to fulfill the requirements of the federal Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. As a result, the Hawaii Constitution stipulates that the state must provide sufficient funds for DHHL to operate.
That was the trigger for a legal challenge, which culminated four years ago, in a ruling favoring the plaintiffs, Native Hawaiian beneficiaries.
The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled in favor of Native Hawaiian beneficiaries, represented by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., finding that the state has “failed by any reasonable measure, under the undisputed facts, to provide sufficient funding to DHHL.”
The case was sent back to Circuit Court, where Judge Jeannette Castagnetti set the needed amount at $28.4 million. Castagnetti later deleted the dollar figure when Doug Chin, the state’s attorney general pressed for a reconsideration, arguing that the discretion to set a funding amount rests with the Legislature.
But it was plain how the judge was inclined, so Ige undoubtedly felt bound to make a good-faith effort to improve the deal for the agency.
And his offer does that: For the 2017 fiscal year, Ige said he is seeking $23.5 million for DHHL — up considerably from the $9.6 million he initially budgeted.
The amount is meant to include enough funding to cover 28 civil service positions, the governor said, which should raise a concern for taxpayers. Civil service posts represent a long-term budgetary liability; how are these positions to be deployed?
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser has for years now tracked sub-par administrative performance at DHHL, chronicling its lack of land-use expertise, fairness and oversight for its controversial revocable permitting system.
Critics also have cited shortcomings with the way DHHL manages its assets, given the persistent waiting list of beneficiaries. Whatever DHHL proposes to do with its new hires, that kind of staffing investment should be repaid with more progress in whittling that overflow.
Before the Legislature approves a budget with the new amounts dedicated to DHHL, lawmakers should be persuaded that a reform program is in the works. Otherwise, they are likely to feel they are throwing good money after bad.
An increased allotment is a good thing, as long as those at the receiving end show they‘ve improved in knowing what they’re doing.
12 responses to “Demand plan on how DHHL will use funds”
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Get a grip bruddah! It is monies owed to native Hawaiian’s through a process with DHHL. No one tell’s you how to spend your State Tax Returns??? Let it be, we owe nothing to the public, it was injustice that started it all. Don’t like it? Low airfares can be found everyday…move, move on! Thank you Gov. Ige for doing what is right.
The state took the funding congress earmarked in the federal statutes dealing with public lands away from the settlement of the set aside lands and diverted it to itself in the form of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The law used to do this is most likely unconstitutional in both federal and state law pursuant to Rice v Cayetano. The leg has no actual legal obligation to fund the state agency. What the Hawaiians and the rest of the public owe the native Hawaiian for taking their land is another matter. Not a matter you will find the NHLC litigating as it is a law firm started and managed by and for Hawaiians, through the OHA. Homesteaders can fund their own land use when no longer obstructed from using it for commerce. DHHL has a sordid history as a place where political debts are paid through leasing and jobs.
This ridiculous program has NOTHING to do with any “injustice” keakoa. It has NOTHING to do with any reparation for anything real or imagined. That was made quite clear when John Wise and Prince Kuhio presented the program to Congress almost 100 years ago in 1920.
Kuhio argued that it was necessary in order to save a “dying race”. He further stated that “all Polynesians know how to do is fish and farm”. (Kind of a racist notion today even if it did come from another Polynesian).
The program was meant to be a commercial farming venture “experiment”. It was to be started first on Molokai growing pineapples, and if the “experiment” worked it would be increased to other islands.
Of course the premise that the “experiment” was based on was that the Polynesians were a “dying race” even though there is evidence that the good Prince knew that the population of Polynesians had been increasing since 1900. The business plan, yes it was a commercial venture, was that as the lease payments came in on leased properties those payments would go to fund new leases. Everyone knew, as the testimony shows, that there was not going to be enough land for all Polynesians that would want some. But, it was decided that there was enough that if the “experiment” worked that enough Polynesians would be helped to make it worth while. If the “experiment” didn’t work it could simply be stopped.
There was another more sinister reason why this program came about. It was discussed behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms. It was known at the time as the “Japanese problem”.
Japanese had been homesteading property at an alarming rate. (Before 1920 anyone of any race could homestead government property). The King Kalakaua leases that were made under his dynasty were coming up for renewal, and these included vast areas of good bottom land much of it controlled by big sugar cane plantations. It was feared that these would also be gobbled up by the huge Japanese and Chinese population in the islands. So, this plan took that property mostly off the table, and set up remaining homesteadable properties for this race based homesteading program under the reasons already discussed above.
This sounded good for all concerned. The sugar growers would get new leases, they were “saving a dying race” and all was happy to put the brakes on any further immigrant homesteading. Once again the most discriminated groups in the islands, the Japanese and Chinese, got the shaft!
Well we now know today that the Polynesians are NOT a “dying race” as more than 550,000 people claimed to be Polynesian-Hawaiian in the last census in the U.S..
The program has no real purpose today as it has morphed somehow into a but tutu a condo in Kona program.
But, what a joke it is. Can anyone tell me how putting tutu in a home and strapping her to a average $350,000 loan is helping her? No wonder in the last “audit” done many years ago now it showed close to $100 million dollars in non-performing loans, property taxes not being paid, people living on the properties that should not be, little or no real farming going on on the land that was leased for such, unpermitted structures, and of course all kinds of illegal activities going on.
What has DHHL done about these issues. Next to nothing! They have been sneakily rewriting nonperforming loans essentially starting them over so it looks like they are good loans as they can be taken off the “bad” list. In a short period they will once again fall into arrears but with this group it’s all about keeping up appearances and keep kicking the can down the road.
It’s time to admit that this “experiment” was a failure and no longer needed, nor was it ever needed, to save ” a dying race”.
I agree with SA that we need a rationale for how the tax money from the general public will be spent. This agency has been an embarrassment for decades.
There is a feasible way to generate new revenues from the trust corpus lands involving the homesteaders themselves, making the addition of new state deadhead jobs unnecessary. It doesn’t involve giving the OHA jokers even more power and even more tax payer money. It fits right in with expanding the tourism infrastructure. David Ige’s rhetoric is nothing more than bloc vote pandering. He knows what this alternative is but nothing can break the back of the status quo one hand washing the other status quo good old boys.
No Casinos in Paradise, Mythman!
Actually DHHL has already said that the money will go to cover “operational and administrative costs”. In other words, “we are going to hire a whole bunch of people that we will need funding forever for and give big raises to existing employees. That way you will have to give us the same amount every year from now to eternity, not for funding of new homesteads, but for bureaucrats with no accountability to anyone”. Just one big black hole known as DHHL.
Ige is a loser who has been hoodwinked by his Polynesian Chief of Staff into believing he has a chance to be re-elected if he panders to the Polynesian voters by giving them more free stuff. He knows that he has come out in favor of the TMT, but his plan is to not do anything on his part to help it. Just stand on the sidelines.
So, he has come out in favor of throwing 10s of millions of dollars to the wind to give appearances of support for one of their illegal Unconstitutional race based programs.
The worst thing that happened to Hawaiians are these endless racial entitlement programs. It is not only that they waste vast sums of taxpayer money. IT is that they feed dependence on government and sap innovation and individual responsibility.. Waiting for handouts is most unfortunate.
Yes allie, unfortunately it is a fact of life that racial entitlement mentality is fed to them so that after a couple generations it is rationalized in their minds that “they wouldn’t be giving it to us if we didn’t have it coming”.
In this case, young Polynesians, like keakoa above, believe that the program has something to do with paying them back for “injustice” done. Which is absolutely false.
Accountability? Not on your life! If the good old boys allow somebody to open that can of worms, we might just find out how many lazy cousins got cushy jobs, how many crooked companies got inflated contracts (Sandwich Isles Telcom, anyone?), and how much cash went for useless “studies.” And its not just OHA/DHHL. Name any state agency that handles land use, contracts, or large sums of money, and you will find waste and nepotism at the very least and probably outright corruption, too.
Correct Wankine, I just laugh hard when I here people in charge of government programs in Hawaii talk of “transparency”.