Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 13, Number 2, 1 February 1996 — House leadership threatens Hawaiians...again! [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

House leadership threatens Hawaiians...again!

by Rowena Akana Trustee-at-large Governor Ben Cayetano has made it clear that he considers Hawaiian entitlements a burden on the state treasury. While ceded land revenues are a mere drop in the bucket in the overall State budget, these revenues «re certainly not his to touch in any event. Hawaiians have a right to these revenues, as affirmed and reaffirmed by a variety of laws and legal instmments. In order to demonstrate just how modest these payments really are, I would like to clarify the formula used by the state to arrive at these figures. Although it is often stated that we receive 20 percent of state ineome from ceded lands, the fine print of

our agreement with the state actually gives us mueh, mueh less. Imagine not one, but two pools of ceded land revenues. One

pool is sovereign ineome and the other is proprietary ineome (see charts). Sovereign ineome includes all of the big ticket items like airport landing fees, Duty Free Shop ineome, ineome generated by the University of Hawai'i, etc. The state holds on to all of this ineome. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs and its native Hawaiian beneficiaries don't

get a cent from sovereign ineome. On the other hand, the second pool, proprietary ineome, involves a considerably smaller

amount of money, drawn from land leases and rents of ceded lands. It is this pool from whieh OHA draws its "20 percent" to

service the needs of native Hawaiians, as required by the 1959 Admission Act. If you look at how mueh of our Hawaiian entitlements eome from these two eombined pools of ineome, you ean see it does not represent 20 percent, rather it is 10 percent (or less) of these two revenue sources. As the charts indicate, the state gets 180 percent of the combined

pools of ineome, while OHA gets only 20 percent of the 200 percent. The State assumed fiduciary obligation

upon being admitted as a state in 1959 and Section 5(f) of the Admissions Act stipulated that proceeds from the sale or other disposition of ceded

lands shall be held by the state as a public trust for the support of: (1) Betterment of the conditions of native Hawaiians, (2) public schools, (3) agricultural development, (4) lands for public use (parks, recreational areas, etc.), and (5) making of puhlie improvements (capital improvement projects). In 1995, Representative Calvin Say introduced a bill that would have diverted the ceded land revenues of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to state eapkal improvement pro-

jects. This wouId have crippled the ability of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to deliver enieial services to the Hawaiian eommunity. It would also have created "double dipping" by the state. As you ean see in the - proprietary ineome chart, the state already gets 20 percent (the same amount OHA receives) specifically for capital improvement projects. To add insult to injury, Hawaiians already pay their fair share of taxes that go toward such building programs! Fortunately, OHA's trustees and Hawaiian organizations were able to mobilize quickly and gain the support necessary to kill Representative Say's bill. Hawaiian entitlements are too vital for us to wait until another crisis situation spurs us to action. We must be more proactive than eonūnueā page 18

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that! Now that the 1996 state legislative session is under way, it is in the interest of Hawaiians and Hawai'i's general public not to allow our legislators to take away what little funds OHA and native Hawaiians receive. Out of two ineome pools representing 200 percent of the "revenue pie," the state already gets 180 percent. Yet, the state wants more and continues to cry the no-more-money blues. Representative Say and Speaker of the House Joseph Souki have helped drive our state into the fiscal fias-

eo in whieh we now find ourselves. They try to deflect blame away from themselves with a lot of smoke and hot air. They don't address the real issues, they invent new ones. They pit Hawaiians against non-Hawaiians by creating an atmosphere of distrust based upon unwarranted fears. They must figure if both sides are too busy fighting, no one will notice who started it. HOUSE LEADERSHIP THREA TENS HAWAIIANS... AGAIN! Hawaiians aren't the only ones at risk here. Every tax paying cit-

izen of Hawaii will be directly affected by the impending decisions of our lawmakers in 1996. Already there's talk of increasing our general excise tax. Already there's talk (again) of taking away OHA's funding to pay for capital improvements. Can we allow the state to continue mismanaging our ceded land funds and our hard earned tax dollars? I think not. We must protect what little we have, before we all end up like the state. Dead broke.