New departments will change city

Oahu residents like to complain about government bureaucracy, but on Tuesday they voted for more of it.

Voters considering 20 Honolulu Charter amendments said yes to creating two new city departments: the Department of Land Management and the Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency.

They also created new commissions: a rate commission for public transportation, a commission for the Clean Water Natural Lands Fund and a climate change commission. Voters also expanded the Fire Commission from five to seven members.

Regarding land use, voters said yes to a deceptively simple and blandly worded question: “Should a new Department of Land Management responsible for the protection, development and management of city lands be established?”

This new department, a top priority for the Caldwell administration, represents an important change in how the city operates, and it bears close watching. The amendment consolidates land management functions now divided among various city departments under a new agency, whose director is appointed by the mayor.

In an Island Voices commentary for the Star-Advertiser, Roy Amemiya Jr., the city’s managing director, called the amendment one of “significant consequence.”

Indeed it is. Nearly every department with a hand in managing the city’s property interests would be affected, with city parks the notable exception. By way of example, Amemiya said that a single city construction project could involve the departments of planning and permitting, facility maintenance, budget and fiscal services, and design and construction.

The process, he said, “can result in a bureaucratic nightmare, duplicative skill sets, and projects often becoming stalled for many years.” A new department would “lead to significant efficiencies and better land-related decisions.”

We hope so. But the public has a right to be wary of such promises, especially if these city departments, all part of the same city administration, cannot now work together without the possibility of a bureaucratic nightmare. It suggests a management issue as well as an organizational one.

That’s one reason it’s in the public’s interest to pay attention to how this new department is created and run. Just setting up a fully functioning department — creating the overall structure, job descriptions, administrative rules and the like — will take an estimated three years.

The charter amendment does include some safeguards for transparency, but they’re fairly modest. It requires that the department justify the public interest in its projects through a report and a single public hearing. The Council would approve the department’s actions by resolution.

It’s critical that city officials ensure that the department’s operations are transparent and readily accessible to the public. The new department is expected to take the lead in major land-use decisions, including transit-oriented development projects around the rail stations — projects involving private partners that have huge long-term consequences for affordable housing and economic development islandwide.

Of course these projects should be done as efficiently as possible. But if efficiency means circumventing robust public participation, that’s going too far.

The other new agency approved by voters, the Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency, is supposed to promote sound environmental practices among city departments. Among other things, its director, appointed by the mayor, would convene a climate change commission that would meet at least twice a year to advise the city on the latest developments in climate change. The department also would work to include “sustainable and environmental values” into city policies.

The effectiveness of this department, now required by the Charter, depends on a lot of unknown variables: among them, the director’s ability to advance the department’s goals, and the practicality of implementing sustainability targets. It would have been better to attempt this without amending the Charter; now that it’s done, however, the mayor and Council need to make sure the investment pays off with sound results.

The same goes for the new commissions. A rate commission for public transportation will review the fare structure for the bus, HandiVan and (eventually) rail transit — necessary to ensure the entire system operates on a solid financial footing.

The seven-member commission for the Clean Water Natural Lands Fund would review spending proposals from the fund and submit recommendations to the Council — a reasonable vetting process that should result in better use of the fund, which acquires land for conservation purposes.

On the whole, the amendments are intended to help the city operate more efficiently and effectively. It will be up to the mayor and Council to make sure this actually happens.