Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 2, 1 February 1995 — Lawmakers challenged to pay for DHHL settlement [ARTICLE]

Lawmakers challenged to pay for DHHL settlement

by Jeff Clark Will a fair Hawaiian home lands settlement be just paper or will it be funded? This legislative session will show if the state plans to make good on yet another promise to homesteaders. In one of the final acts of his adminisn"ation, outgoing Gov. John Waihe'e last year approved a settlement of $600 million to be paid by the state to the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) for the use and misuse of homestead land. The settlement was reached after seven years of negotiations by a task force eomprised of representatives of DHHL, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Office of State Planning,

the attorney general, and more recently Judge Edward King, a court-appointed representative of home lands beneficiaries. The task force found that thousands of acres were wrongfuUy used or withdrawn from the home lands tmst by state and territorial actions. Now there's an agreement, but the state Legislature's challenge is finding a way to make good on it. Legislators and interim budget and finance director Earl Anzai both are saying the cupboard is bare and that many state programs will be cut. Gov. Ben Cayetano and Senate Ways and Means Committee chairperson Donna Ikeda have both expressed doubks about the state's ability to fulfill the agreement's stipulation of two

decades of $30 million-a-year payments. Another potential stumbling block is legislators' hurt feelings over not being included in the negotiations. At an informauonal hearing Jan. 21, Rep. Dennis Arakaki, chair of the House Hawaiian Affairs and Housing committee, said he wanted to learn how the settlement was reached. DHHL director Kali Watson implored the legislators to "honor this agreement and implement this." At prcss time, no bill had been introduced that would finance the settlement. OHA government affairs officer Scotty Bowman said the govemor's administration may submit a bill to accompIish the continued on page 12

1 DHHL settlement from page 6

settlement, possibly through a bond issuance similar to the one that the state used in 1993 to pay OHA for past uses of ceded lands.

(Rep. Dwight Takamine did introduce House Bill 944, whieh would estabhsh a trust fund to receive the monies onee the settlement is enacted.) The settlement proposal is aimed at setthng all remaining claims against the state for wrongful uses and exchanges of homestead lands. Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. spokespersons have called it "the most significant development to occur since the creation of the program itself in 1921." The settlement covers "questionable land exchanges" and unresolved title claims involving land at Lualualei (O'ahu); Keaukaha, Pana'ewa, Kawaihae and Pu'ukapu (Hawai'i island); Kalaupapa (Moloka'i); Waimea (Kaua'i); and Kula (Maui). Bowman said DHHL believes it is owed $1.2 billion, but that the department compromised at $600 million - half that sum - to avoid having to fight for eaeh of the hundreds of claims separately in court, a process that would take years. The agreement comes on the heels of last October's approval of a transfer of 16,518 acres of land to DHHL and of 1992's agreement by the Legislature to pay $12 million for public use of home lands. Ka'imo Muhlestein, chair of the Hawaiian Home Lands Action Network, said it's important that home lands beneficiaries and the community in general support legislation related to the settlement.