Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 6, 1 June 2009 — Good news, bad news [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Good news, bad news

Aloha Kākou, The 25th state Legislature is pau for now and we ean look back at the issues OHA worked on with some degree of satisfaction but a greater degree of disappointment. Whining and complaining do not solve problems but they do attract attention. And so take the following with a grain of salt, some liniu kohu, 'inamona and an aspirin: A eouple of disclaimers: First, I am not privy to the inner operations of the administration and the Legislature. I've met with leaders before and appreciate their time and attention; however, what goes on within their inner sanctum is an unknown to me. Second may I say, I didn't personally hang out at the Capitol this session so don't blame me for "Islam Day." With that, let's see what transpired at the polhieal palaee this year. The good news is that OHA's bonding authority was clarified and a moratorium bill was passed. I also want to commend Rep. Mele Carroll for standing up to the challenge. The bad news is our failure to get the Legislature to pay what they owe OHA for pastdue ceded lands payments. OHA submitted a bill for $200 million last year. Five senators including Sen. Clayton Hee killed the bill. This year again, under Hee's leadership OHA's bill for payment in land was ignored and replaced with parcels apparently acknowledging speeial causes including Mauna Kea (for Mililani Trask?), fishponds (for Walter Ritte?), Kahana Valley (for Hee's constituency?), accreted land and fill (?), and an interesting variety of parcels whose polhieal worth are known only to the good senator. Not satisfied with that, he changed the bill at the last minute to include an option for a global settlement of the ceded lands

issue. In the bill Hee said that this global settlement was the same as Gov. Cayetano's, whieh was a sensible one in 1999 (when Trustees Hee and Akana pushed unsuccessfully for Cayetano's global settlement). No one heard about this addition or discussed it except in the inner offices of Sen. Hee. One would think that after working so many years for OHA and the betterment of the Hawaiian people that Sen. Hee would have some aloha left for us guys and would be working with us, not against us. Our luek, I guess. But not to mislead, OHA, faced with nothing or something, agreed to go with his global settlement as an option without any reference to future claims. This was not something we rehshed, but we could accept as a eonsideration with further study and public hearings. End result: the House didn't buy the senator's shenanigans and Hawaiians end up with nothing onee more. With the budget bill, the Senate again, under the astute leadership of Sen. Hee, decided that a 20 percent cut in general funds, as with most other state agencies, was not enough. They wanted zero to eome to OHA instructing us to use our own trust funds, whieh are protected under the law. The House stuck with the 20 percent cut. Then Sen. Hee eame up with the "windfall" argument saying monies received by OHA from the state when it lost to Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. in a court case should be paid back to the state by OHA and if not, our budget would be zero. Kinda like legitimately winning money and then being told to give it back to the loser or else. Well, we gave back more than half but preserved the 20 percent cut of our budget. Even at the last minute, though, Sen. Hee manipulated expenditures from OHA's budget to some of his interests without ever consulting OHA, and so what? Hawaiians end up with even less. OK, so if I've whined and complained, don't say I didn't warn you. Maybe next year we ean push for "Hee Day" and "She Day" and get our Legislature to pay us what they've owed us over the last 30 years. ■

Būyd P. Mossman TrustEE, Maui