Land Board Lags on Minutes
State law requires minutes to be made of agency meetings within 30 days of the meeting date. But of the 21 meetings the board had held in the first 10 and a half months of 1996, as of mid-December, minutes for six meetings were unavailable and past due. Of the remaining 15 meetings, minutes for eight were not approved until after the 30-day statutory deadline.
And of the 21 meetings the board held in all of 1995, minutes of two meetings are still unavailable.
In other words, so far this year, the BLNR has racked up a compliance record of just 35 percent, with minutes for 13 out of 20 meetings either late or still unavailable. In 1995, the compliance record was 9.5 percent, with minutes of 19 of the 21 meetings late or missing.
According to a review by Environment Hawai`i, as of December 13, when the board held its 23rd meeting of the year, minutes were still unavailable for BLNR meetings of March 3, July 12, August 23, September 27, October 11, and November 8.
As Environment Hawai`i has reported in the past, the Board of Land and Natural Resources has often had difficulty preparing timely and adequate minutes of its meetings. For the first six months of 1995, for example, no minutes of any meetings were prepared or approved. Soon thereafter, the BLNR attempted to catch up, but the quality of minutes was sacrificed, with little or no meaningful reporting on the nature of discussions or testimony presented to the board.
Nor was the catch-up effort completely successful. Approval of six of the BLNR’s 21 meetings in 1995 did not occur until March 8, 1996. And, as noted earlier, minutes for the June 23 and November 17 meetings in 1995 are still outstanding.
BLNR Mails Out ‘Briefing’ Agendas
Following our disclosure of illegal board briefings in the December 1996 article “[url=/members_archives/archives_more.php?id=1035_0_28_0_C]Land Board Fails to Provide Public Notice of ‘Briefings[/url]” of Environment Hawai`i , the BLNR appears to have begun sending out briefing agendas to members of the public who have requested notification of board meetings. Accompanying the agenda for the BLNR’s December 13 meeting were agendas for no less than three briefings (two on the afternoon of December 12 and one for the morning of December 13).
The subject of the first briefing was a report by DLNR staff on guidelines for commercial use of state lands. At the second briefing, the Land Board heard a private marina operator speak to the issue of privatization of the state’s small boat harbors. At the third, the Land Board heard the screening committee that qualified people for state land leases explain the methods it used.
Environment Hawai`i requested a list of all board briefings held in 1995 and 1996. The response provided by the Department of Land and Natural Resources indicates that on at least five occasions, the Land Board held briefings for which the public was not given proper notice. One such briefing agenda, for November 7, 1996, indicated that the Land Board “may go into executive session” to discuss the issue at hand (hiring of a consultant to review Chapter 171, Hawai`i Revised Statutes). If so, Board Chairman’s Michael Wilson’s claim that the Land Board could hold unnoticed briefings because no decisions were made and no votes were taken breaks down. Under law, no executive session may be called except by a vote taken at a duly announced meeting, for reasons clearly stated at the time of the vote.
Volume 7, Number 7 January 1997