Last month, the state Environmental Council lost two more members. The resignations brought to four the number of members quitting in disgust this year. On May 4, David Bylund, chairman of the council’s annual report committee, submitted his resignation letter to Governor Lingle, describing the council as “too politicized, undermined, and ineffective.” One week later, Wade Lord informed the governor that he, too, was stepping down.
Earlier this year, council chairman Robert King and member Christopher Steele resigned, citing the lack of support for the council’s work by the administration of Governor Linda Lingle. (King’s resignation was reported in the May issue of Environment Hawai`i.)
Bylund was chairman of the council’s annual report committee. In 2007, the theme of the report was environmental justice, selected largely at the suggestion of the Legislature. “I was dismayed and upset to discover that your office did not release the Annual Report because you did not agree with some of its contents,” Bylund wrote Lingle. “Your office did not inform the Council of your decision not to distribute the report.”
In 2008, the council’s annual report focused on the theme of food security and self-sufficiency. This time, the governor’s office supported the theme, but when the time came to prepare and distribute the report, Bylund wrote, “the staff support in the Office of Environmental Quality Control had disappeared. This situation required our committee and OEQC Director Kathy Kealoha to try to take over their tasks. One of the requirements for the Environmental Council is to ‘monitor the progress of state, county, and federal agencies in achieving the state’s environmental goals and policies.’ We were unable to gather agency information because of the lack of staff support.” For the 2009 report, Bylund continued, “it is clear that there continues to be no staff support and there are no funds for the production of the report.”
Lord mentioned in his list of grievances the lack of progress in amending council rules, the suppressed annual report, and insufficient staff support, among other things. Both he and Bylund echoed a complaint made by the council chairman Robert King in his resignation letter of April 7 concerning inadequate meeting facilities. King had objected to ever-smaller meeting rooms and video-conference facilities that were dysfunctional.
The video-conferencing was intended to reduce travel costs, Lord noted, and, “while this seemed like a reasonable alternative, it has been wholly inadequate. The equipment consistently malfunctions and there is no technical support… In the several meetings I have attended via video-conferencing, we have yet to have a single meeting wherein the equipment worked.”
Wrote Bylund, “the council was happy to embrace video-conferencing for our monthly meetings. However, the result is our being relegated to inadequate basement training rooms, too small for our council meetings, much less to welcome public participation. In addition, there has been no technical support in O`ahu and on the neighbor islands.”
The council members “are good people, donating their valuable time and expertise to help make Hawai`i a better place,” Lord wrote. “They do not, and I do not, deserve to be treated this way.”
Bylund’s parting words were more damning: “The only conclusion I can reach is that the [Department of Health] and your office find no value in the Environmental Council.”
Steele was the first council member to resign this year. In a phone interview, Steele said he had “worked long and hard for years to have the opportunity to sit on the council.” His resignation, he added, “was not an easy decision,” but there was an “absolute lack of support. It felt like no one wanted anything to do with us. They treated us like a lost stepchild.”
At full strength, the Environmental Council has 15 members. According to a staff person, there were no new appointments this year and no members whose terms expire at the end of June. The council approves agency exemption lists (lists of actions that do not trigger preparation of an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement) and promulgates rules to implement the state environmental policy act, Chapter 343 of Hawai`i Revised Statutes.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 19, Number 12 June 2009
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