Section 171-33 of Hawai`i Revised Statutes is a good law. It calls for the state Board of Land and Natural Resources to plan for the use of state lands and, in paragraph 9, mandates the board to “determine, two years before the expiration of the term of any lease,” whether the use to which the land is being put is to continue or whether it should be “reserved for other use or uses.”
Did the Land Division, the staff of the Land Board on issues relating to leased land, do this for Pu`uwa`awa`a? We posed that question to Harry Yada, head of the Land Division for the Hawai`i Island District.
“I think the only thing that was done was, we sent a letter to [F. Newell] Bohnett, asking him what was his – if he had any kind of desire regarding the future of the lease,” Yada said. “At that point, his response was to check off that he wanted to extend it, but nothing was done.”
“The purpose of the law is to be fair to the lessee,” Yada continued, “and I don’t know that we’ve done that. The purpose of the law was to make sure that the state notified the lessee if we were to do something different. In this case, I don’t think we ever did that.”
Whoa there. When it comes to Bohnett’s 28-year tenure on Pu`uwa`awa`a, the state has bent over backwards to accommodate a ruinous ranching operation. Perhaps – and we stress perhaps — Bohnett did indicate to Yada that he “wanted to extend” the lease in 1998, but even if he did so, Yada would have had to weigh this against Bohnett’s own repeated requests over the previous five years that he be allowed to unload the lease onto his ranch hands.
More troubling is Yada’s interpretation of the purpose of the law – “to be fair to the lessee.” That’s absolutely wrong: the purpose is to advance the cause of good planning and appropriate land use. When the Land Board determines that a current use is no longer in the best interests of the state, then the Land Board is merely to do the tenant the courtesy of providing two-year notice. That’s all. The law says nothing about taking the lessee’s wishes into account.
Yada’s interpretation is, unfortunately, all too typical of Land Division staffers. In the main, they view lessees on state land as their clients and have lost sight of the fact that their real responsibility is to the public. To that extent, they no longer merit the public’s trust.
For that matter, given the wretched quality of the staff report to the Land Board on Pu`uwa`awa`a presented at the July 14 meeting, Land Division staff should no longer enjoy the board’s trust either. Here are just a few of its failings:
* Despite a detailed chronology going back to 1960, there is no activity listed for the years from 1985 to 1996, a period in which Bohnett’s lease was subject to scathing reports (including in this publication) and a legislative inquiry. Why this omission?
* A requirement that Bohnett fence the lease boundaries was referred to as unverified, with staff having been unable to locate it until the editor of this publication led them to it.
* The staff report refers to a “claim” that the director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control indicated no need for an environmental assessment prior to assignment of the lease to a conservation group. The memo from the OEQC director stating exactly this is easily found in lease files. “It is my understanding,” Yada writes, “that [the OEQC director] has denied this claim.” There is no basis for Yada’s “understanding.”
* The staff report states that Kapapala Ranch, also on state-owned land, had to prepare an environmental assessment for its ecotourism activities. To the contrary: The Land Division itself decided that the change in land use did not trigger the environmental disclosure law and thus no environmental assessment was ever published.
It would be unfair to single out Yada. The report he submitted and the recommendations it contained had obviously been thoroughly vetted with his boss, Dean Uchida, who bears ultimate responsibility for what the board sees.
Yet it is this same staff that the Land Board has instructed to “audit” the lease to determine the extent of violations that may have been left uncured by Bohnett at the time the lease was transferred to his ranch hands.
How can the Land Board think for a New York minute that its staff is up to this task? For four decades, staff has given only the most cursory attention to the goings-on at Pu`uwa`awa`a. Time and again, when violations have been noted – even violations discovered through the very lease files maintained by the Land Division – they have been addressed only when the public rises up in outrage. Invariably when this occurs, the staff regards the public as its enemy and the lessee as its comrade in arms.
No, the board should not trust its staff – either with the audit or with the bond, which absolutely must not be released without direct Land Board approval. And if the board desires an audit (as it should), staff should not be the auditors, but should itself, along with Bohnett, be subject to the audit. The board should hire an independent auditing firm and give it the mandate to go through the lease, point by point, and verify compliance both through a rigorous check of departmental records as well as with an on-the-ground inspection. It will cost money, of course, and this will be the immediate objection.
For years, though, the state has justified the ongoing destruction of Pu`uwa`awa`a’s unique and priceless natural treasures on the grounds that it needed the revenue – though it’s always been a piddling sum when held up against the cost of restoring those treasures to health. Now the land has been exhausted; if it can support profitable ranching at all anymore, it probably won’t do so much beyond the next year.
Payback time has come for Pu`uwa`awa`a. If the Land Board can’t do right, finally, by this sorely abused land, it’s time for a wholesale keelhauling of the way the state manages its lands.
Volume 11, Number 3 September 2000
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