Where the state, county, and Bishop Estate failed, the IRS may have succeeded: On August 19, 1999, Floyd Anglin, his wife, Grace, and their son, Bruce, reported to federal prison in California. The three had pleaded guilty early in the year to a series of criminal charges that arose out of the failure of the Anglins’ quarry at Kamalo, Moloka`i to pay employment taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service.
The Anglins’ convictions closed one chapter in their long history of encounters with the law. Yet to be resolved are two civil suits. One, brought by Bishop Estate, claims that the Anglins should be declared in default of their lease from the estate, which owns the land where the quarry is operated; the other, filed by Maui County, seeks to have the quarry shut down for violations of the state land use law.
The state Department of Health, which for years had outstanding notices of violations against the quarry, shrugged off its claims and $21,500 in fines last December, three months before it issued Bruce Anglin a new permit to operate.
Other claims against the Anglins have been filed, though not yet in court, by the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (for three years of unpaid unemployment insurance premiums, amounting to more than $30,000). This is in addition to a handful of private judgments that, according to records at the state Bureau of Conveyances, have not been paid off.
At the quarry, about eight miles east of Kaunakakai, excavation of the pit appears to have ceased in recent months. In September, gravel was stockpiled at the site, along with mounds of old tires and row after row of derelict vehicles and machinery.
Second Chances
The quarry along Kamalo Stream was first proposed to the Maui County Planning Department in 1987. At that time, LeRoy Austin intended to develop a quarry on 75 acres of land he had leased from Bishop Estate at Kamalo. Austin told the Maui County Planning Commission he would remove boulders, gravel and sand from the bed of Kamalo Stream: “There’s where we’re going to get the concrete sand. Rather than take the quarry and grind up the basalt rock and then try to find sand to blend in with it to bring to spec, we have all the specs right in this canyon. Mother Nature made it for us.”
Despite concerns from some community members, the Planning Commission approved the Special Use Permit that Austin and his company, Moloka`i Concrete and Aggregate, Inc., was required to obtain under Hawai`i’s land use laws. “We’ll improve the stream banks, is what we’ll do,” Austin said.
The state Land Use Commission, which normally rubber-stamps such permits issued at the county level, determined the use was not appropriate. To circumvent the LUC’s denial, in 1988 Austin, who had changed the name of his company to Aukaina, Inc., applied for a Special Use Permit for use of 14.99 acres. Fifteen acres is the threshold below which Land Use Commission concurrence is not required.
On September 20, 1988, the Planning Commission considered Austin’s application and once more approved it. But start-up of operations was slower than Austin had expected. In August 1989, Austin requested — and, in November 1989, he received — a six-month extension of the one-year start-up deadline in his permit. In March 1990, he was again pleading for an extension.
Yet another extension was granted, but not before evidence surfaced that Austin and Bishop Estate were at loggerheads, with Bishop Estate terminating the lease on June 1 “to protect Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate’s interests and landholdings.”
But by June 19, 1990, the estate had reversed course and notified the Moloka`i Planning Commission that Austin’s chief creditor would “cure all defaults under the lease.” Thus, the estate was no longer objecting to a time extension of the quarry permit.
Enter the Anglins
The holder of Austin’s mortgage on the quarry was a California firm, Advanced Mortgage Servicing Corp., owned by members of the family of Floyd Calvin Anglin.
The Anglin family made its first appearance before the Moloka`i Planning Commission at its October 1990 meeting, when the quarry was seeking a third time extension of the start-up deadline.
Violations of permit terms were already being found by this time, although much of the quarrying equipment was not yet on site. Among them, boundaries of the 14.99-acre parcel had not been clearly staked and marked; a required drainage and erosion control report was inadequate; and buildings had been erected and grubbing was done without permits (sought only after-the-fact).
In October, the Moloka`i Planning Commission voted to deny the time-extension request. Commissioner Kaye Waldorf made the motion, noting that the commission had little enforcement power “and those agencies of government that do have enforcement powers seem to be very slow in exercising them.”
“It is my opinion,” he continued, “that Mr. Austin has not, does not have a very good track record in meeting the requirements of this body or of other government agencies that are involved.”
Yet the following month, the commission reconsidered the issue after the Anglins’ attorney requested a rehearing. At that meeting, Floyd Anglin explained that in June, Austin had approached him for a loan of $250,000 for the quarry. “We have not only spent that first $250,000 but we have spent almost another $150,000” to get the quarry going and “reconstruct” Kamalo Stream, Anglin said.
This time, the extension was granted. Not long afterward, operations officially began.
Volume 10, Number 4 October 1999
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