The Board of Land and Natural Resources on Friday unanimously approved sweeping changes to its controversial month-to-month land leasing program, aiming to improve transparency and accountability in issuing and renewing rental agreements that currently cover nearly 100,000 acres statewide.
The changes are designed to provide the public with clearer justifications on why revocable permits, rather than long-term leases, are being issued and whether the monthly rents are fair for the state. The revisions also are meant to open the process to competition if multiple parties potentially are interested in a parcel.
“There’s a lot of irregular things going on with revocable permits, and I think this would straighten a lot of them out,” said board member Thomas Oi, a former state land agent on Kauai.
The changes were recommended by a task force that Suzanne Case, board chairwoman, established in February following a Honolulu Star-Advertiser series that exposed multiple flaws with the program and as criticism mounted over the bulk-review process the board used to routinely renew permits each December.
| SEEKING MORE TRANSPARENCY
Changes approved by the Board of Land and Natural Resources to the department’s revocable-permit program include:
>> Reviewing land permits at four meetings a year.
>> Establishing standard template showing permit justifications.
>> Developing policy guidelines to ensure fair process, including setting of rents.
>> Listing all permits and key information online at dlnr.hawaii.gov/ld/revocable-permits-land-division.
>> Requiring the tracking of “market interest” in permit parcels to determine whether they should be offered for competitive bidding.
Source: Department of Land and Natural Resources
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A court decision in January that took the Department of Land and Natural Resources to task for using revocable permits to provide Alexander & Baldwin with access to Maui water for more than a decade also fueled the controversy. The court invalidated the permits.
DLNR currently has more than 300 revocable permits on its books, generating roughly $2 million in rent annually.
The Star-Advertiser found that some permits have been in place for decades, despite the short-term nature of the program, and in some cases the discounted rents have remained unchanged since the 1990s, including some held by large landowners or for-profit companies. The series also highlighted inconsistencies and the absence of rules for administering the program.
Revocable permits are intended for temporary occupancy of state property and provide the landowning agency with added revenue while shifting maintenance responsibilities to the tenant.
The department plans to apply the changes approved Friday to the issuance of new permits and the renewal of existing ones.
The renewals for land-division permits, which represent the vast majority overseen by the board, will be presented in smaller batches — grouped by county — at four separate meetings so members have more time to evaluate individual deals and ask questions. All other permits, including those for water rights and park land, would be presented at another meeting.
Because of the increased workload associated with the changes, the agency said it plans to ask the Legislature next year for an undetermined number of additional employees to sustain the heightened oversight.
While the changes generally were applauded by some critics, who said the revisions will result in more transparency, they recommended that the board go even further, including providing more specificity in recommendations that are vague.
Marti Townsend, director of Sierra Club of Hawaii, said simply approving policy guidance calling for more fairness in the process, while commendable, should not be a replacement for specific regulations that can be legally enforced.
Establishing regulations “is a basic, necessary next step to rebuild trust in the management of our public trust resources,” Townsend said in written testimony to the board.
But board member Chris Yuen, who served on the task force, said administrative rules are not necessary.
Such rules would be needed if the department were trying to bind or control what the public can do, he said. The policy approach, however, will bind DLNR staff, and the board can ensure that the policies are followed to bring more fairness to the awarding of permits, Yuen added.
Case, who lauded the job that the eight-member task force did, told the board that she considers the revisions “a work in progress” and that more improvements would be made if the department hears of better ways to refine the process.
Stanley Roehrig, the Hawaii island board member, likewise applauded the new approach, saying it will make the process much clearer to the public.
“It’s a good forward step for our board,” he said.
