Honolulu Star-Bulletin from Honolulu, Hawaii • 8

A-8 Thursday. February 22. 1996 Star-Bulletin HAWAIIAN lOMELANDS PROBLEMS A PROM Wait for years, get a junk house The dilemma of the late Hilbert 'Kahale' Smith was not a unique one Do businesses get red carpet treatment? Yes, say Hawaiians who feel they're treated likd second-class citizens Homelands are the cradle of a culture What's lacking, some say, is a sense of stewardship among commissioners By Joan Conrow and Rod Thompson a a i.1 1 A 1 Ssa. 1 iK Hit HAWAI tion jobs twice weekly and imposing strict procedures for contract negotiations and management He points to the new271-home Princess Kahanu Estates subdivision in Lu-alualei on Oahu as an example of the department's ability to complete a quality project "It's beautiful, marvelous, but they had to go through 4,500 names to get enough people financially qualified," said Peter Kama, presi-. dent of a support group for those on the waiting list "So the already successful are getting good houses, but those who need to be rehabilitated are still not on the land." Maly said the department shouldn't try to build houses for Hawaiians.

"Give people access to self-help." That's what's happening on Kauai, where the Office of Hawaiian Affairs approved a $1.7 million interest-free loan to help Habitat for Humanity build 100 homes in Anahola. Sabra Kau-ka, who serves on Habi It I'll 1 0 battle over shoddy Hawaiian Homes con struction is more vivid or tragic than the 18-year fight that ended in the death ofHilbert "Kahale" Smith. But Smith, who torched his decrepit Kauai home during a Jan. 18 eviction for delinquent lease payments, is just one of many Hawaiians who spent years waiting, only to be awarded a new house in need of major repairs. Henry Smith got a home in the same Ana-hola subdivision as his brother, and spent nearly two decades fighting over repairs before he was evicted last October.

Their neighbor, John "Butch" Kekahu, is still wrangling with the department to have his mortgage forgiven in lieu of repairs never made. He said he's kept up the struggle because "they're still doing the same mistakes today." On the Big Island, pastor Henry Kahale-hili looks back on three IZ. T'iiW 1 -ill BY KEN ICE, Sur-Bullelin Pastor Henry Kahalehili says this 5-year-old Panaewa home in the Hilo area has so much termite damage that no one "has ever lived in it. tat's board of directors, concept suits depressed, rural areas homesteaders often have more money. homesteaders are prepared to hammer.

A recent survey showed applicants expect the agency to houses. The survey also showed lessees expect DHHL to enforce rules, fix plumbing, clean up fallen and fulfill other duties of a manager, a role the agency isn't set he is working to resolve those years of fighting the department, trying to get it to fix brand new, but substandard, termite-eaten homes in the Panaewa area of Hilo. "We've caught them in so many lies," he said. Hawaiian Homes Chairman Kali Watson said most of the shoddy homes were built in the early 1970s. That was followed by a nearly 20-year hiatus before the department reentered the homebuilding business in 1991 with 50 houses in Panaewa.

But almost no eligible Hawaiians could afford the houses, which cost $63,000 to $74,000. The department had to go through 850 applicants to find 50 who qualified, said community spokesman Kepa Maly. The following year, termites were found. Finally the Legislature ordered Hawaiian Homes to spend $3 million on repairs. But the department used $1 million of that for legal fees to fight the homeowners, Maly said.

What most irks Smith, Kekahu and Kahalehili is that they didn't get the perfect new houses they paid for. Kahalehili said his stove, which doesn't meet contract specifications, is falling apart after just four years. Watson said DHHL has taken steps to ensure that "there should never be another Panaewa," including inspecting all construc ByJoanConrow Star-BulUlm The homelands are generally viewed as places for native Hawaiians to farm and live. But some think their value goes beyond that "They are an important foundational block for Hawaiian culture" and the land base of a sovereign nation, said Hawaiian rights attorney Alan Murakami. And that entails a level of stewardship that some say has been lacking.

They say Hawaiian Homes commissioners focus too narrowly on building houses, with little thought to a broader management plan that protects the diversity of the trust's varied lands. "Protecting natural and cultural resources should be one of their prime directives," said Ka-maki Kanahele, president of the State Council of Hawaiian Homestead Associations. Hawaiian Homes Chairman Kali Watson said the agency has no plans to change its approach. And he is clear that commissioners alone should decide how homelands are managed, even concerning endangered species. "I agree that Hawaiians should not be destroying their heritage," Watson said.

"But it should be our decision about what we want to do there. We still feel the state cannot pass any legislation that places an encumberance on our lands, without the consent of Congress." Watson hasn't shaken his stance that the agency is exempt from state endangered species laws, despite a recent opinion from state Attorney General Margery Bronster to the contrary. The issue surfaced when federal botanists disclosed that a cinder mining venture on a Big Island homestead leased to state Sen. Malama Solomon's mother would destroy much of what was left of a rare plant species. Mike Buck, who runs the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife, thinks such showdowns can be avoided.

Land exchanges, which Watson supports, are one way. But Buck said he thinks there are ways "to put people on the land and still protect resources and enhance revenues and habitat" That might include reforesting Big Island pastures with native trees, he said, or expanding a Maui program where homesteaders are settling remote, undeveloped lots under a plan to restore the Kahikinui forest reserve. Buck noted that other homesteaders, especially on Molokai, are managing hunting areas previously run by his agency. He applauds the shift "Who better to manage native Hawaiian resources than Hawaiians?" Watson said he also welcomes that kind of homesteader initiative in caring for the land. "I'm open to any kind of suggestion that will move the program along." I i Gentle, steady protest led to a new way of thinking 'it MA Sonny Kaniho tends his brother's He had no bad feelings about the ranch.

In fact he praised the ranch for helping his grandparents stay on their land in territorial days when Hawaiian Homes tried to kick them off. But not everyone was so lucky, and he felt someone had to speak up. "If we don't demonstrate, it means we are happy waiting." Kimura said Kaniho turned to protesting only after trying to get government officials to listen and sifting through reams of documents. putting homelands to uss A total of 187,467 acres of land has been set aside statewide as Hawaiian only 40,397 acres about 21.5 percent is actually in homestead use. Here is the breakdown by island, as of June 1994.

18,558 4.33 in homestead 6,585 acres 13.7 in homestead 25,366 43.4 in thinks the where time than But not all pick up a 34 percent of build them that many community branches property up to play. Watson said issues. Bv Rod Thompson Big Island correspondent tl HILO The picture is clear to Patrick Kahawaiolaa: As long as, Hawaiians don't have homes, no one should get commercial leases on Hawaiian homelands. Kahawaiolaa has led opposi-; tion to the development of Wa- iakea Center, an 18-acre projecC featuring a Wal-Mart on HawaK ian homelands in Hilo. A resident on his mother's lease land, Kahawaiolaa says the department has insulted his fam-i ly members trying to get land.

"How many others have they done this to?" he asked. i He says commercial lessees, mostly non-Hawaiians, get the red carpet treatment "Their purpose is to get our land to make sure other people use it" he said. Hawaiian Homes Chairman Kali Watson said such commer-f. cial leases are needed to ate money to put beneficiaries into homes. Two Big Island projects alone will bring in $2 million per yearj he said.

The Waiakea lease will generate $850,000 and a 60-megat watt energy plant by Waimana Enterprises at Kawaihae would, pay $1.2 million yearly. Both are headed by part- Hawaiians, a point which carries no weight with Kahawaiolaa. Other leases produce up to $5-million a year, Watson said. Thai can be used to get $18 million in; bond money, enough for roads, sewer and water lines for 500 homes a year. "That's why it's so important to do these high-income general leases, because we can get (financial) leverage to move the pro- gram along," Watson said, noting that just 2.5 percent of all home-I stead land have such leases.

Kahawaiolaa said the depart- ment should just put homes on the 18-acre Waiakea site. Make the Legislature kick in money, he said. Kau'ilani Almeida, program director for the Panaewa community association near the Waiakea Center, also opposes it But the community decided to accept re; ality and the first-time-ever pay ment by a commercial lessor of I $100,000 a year into a community nonprofit organization, she The developer is also commit ted in writing to training Hawai-; ians and giving them the first shot at jobs in the center. Her real preference: to end commercial leases and have homesteaders pay property taxes to the department instead of to the counties. The Waimana power plant also faces opposition.

Josephine of three beneficiaries! who sued the department, de- manding that Waimana do an environmental study, said the site for the plant was used by Kame-, hameha and contains burial grounds. I Four families living there are being forced out, she said. "1 Hawaiian homelands MOLOKAI dwao By Kevin Hand, star-Bulletin 16,581 acres to the trust and Con-t gress has agreed to convey other lands to compensate for 1,400 acres illegally taken or used by I the federal government These actions will make the trust whole for the first time in 76 years, Watson said. "A lot of the frustrations, anger and hostility of the Hawai-" ian people to the program are justified," he said. "But now we need to look at the tremendous opportunities for this program to move ahead." HAWAII JtYHiki; taking the lead," said retired judge Shunichi Kimura, who handled many of Kaniho's trespassing cases.

"He made that very just cause very public." Upon retiring from the Air Force as a sergeant in 1965, Kaniho returned to Hawaii and found himself talking with elderly Hawaiians waiting to receive Hawaiian Homes leases. They had put their names on a waiting list in 1952. More than a decade later, they were still waiting. When they described it, they weren't mad; they just laughed. When Kaniho investigated, the department told him no waiting list existed.

Kaniho found it printed on the front page of a 1952 newspaper. The department finally reinstated it in 1983. In 1974, Kaniho began his trademark protests now numbering close to a dozen. He trespassed by putting a few head of his own cattle on land leased to Parker Ranch. By Rod Thompson, siar-Buiietin cattle.

"He must have gone through thousands of pages, unlike some who make a lot of noise," Kimura said. Kaniho did break the law. But he was always civil in his manner and made no complaint when sentenced, Kimura said. "He never alibied; he never whined." And he never stopped. As recently as Dec.

9 Kaniho put cattle on a tract on the side of Mauna Kea leased to a non-Hawaiian. Kaniho was arrested but not charged. KAUAI 4 Waimea FROM PAGE ONE Sonny Kaniho brought about a re-examination of non-Hawaiian leasing By Rod Thompson Biff Island correspondent WAIMEA, Hawaii -There was a time when Hawaiians just laughed at the thought of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands doing something for them. But that has changed, in large measure due to a gentle Big Island protester, Sonny Kaniho. For more than two decades, Kaniho, 73, of Waimea, has put his cattle on Hawaiian Homes agricultural land leased to non-Hawaiians such as Parker Ranch.

His protests led to a reexamination of the non-Hawaiian leasing, which the department now plans to abandon, Chairman Kali Watson says. "I don't know anyone else who should be given credit for gations of incompetence, favoritism, bureaucratic bumbling and political cronyism. Hawaiians, steadily losing confidence in the state-appointed administrators and commissioners who oversaw the trust, began pressing for major reform and redress for past wrongs. "They had been treated so shabbily that the native Hawaiian rights movement was an outgrowth of it," Murakami said. It was in that politically charged climate that then-Gov.

John Wai-hee and the state Legislature began looking at ways to resolve a host of claims against the trust. Lawmakers passed the landmark Native Hawaiian Judicial Relief Act in 1988, which gave beneficiaries a right to sue over past violations. And in 1993, lawmakers created an independent review committee to handle some 4,300 claims by beneficiaries that predated the right to sue. Back to negotiating table Meanwhile, Waihee convened a committee of his top administrators to resolve claims regarding state uses of trust lands. But when the panel proposed a $12 million ROUGH: Homesteading no walk in the park OAHU acres use Honolulu use 28,995 acres 1.54 in homestead use acres homestead use 107,490 acres! Sa" 25.3 in homestead use settlement and lawmakers began pressing DHHL to sign a release against any future claims or actions, homestead beneficiaries sued.

"The same crooks who took our land were deciding how much we should be paid," Kama said. The courts ordered the state to return to the negotiating table, this time with an independent counsel to represent the beneficiaries. Edward C. King, former chief justice of the Federated States of Micronesia, was chosen for the job. The panel ultimately identified lands valued at more than $1 billion that apparently were never brought into the trust or were allowed out illegally.

They arrived at a settlement of $600 million, which lawmakers last year agreed to pay at the rate of $30 million annually for 20 years. The present worth of such a promise is about $310 million, because value is lost when the full amount isn't immediately invested. Still, King thinks it was fair given the raft of legal questions that clouded some of the issues. He is less comfortable with lawmakers' treating the $600 million as final settlement of all violations FROM PAGE A-l unsuitable for productive development" the report states. Much of the best of what was left would be lost over the next 30 years.

Territorial governors acting beyond their authority transferred 13,578 acres to other public agencies. And another 13,341 acres that weren't initially identified as part of the trust were A lack of cash Although rich in marginal lands, the trust has always been cash poor. Until 1989, it was dependent on outside leases to generate operating income. Despite a provision in Hawaii's Constitution that requires the state to administer and support the act it contributes just 27 cents of each dollar it takes to run the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. "That's not priority at all," said Alan Murakami, an attorney with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp.

"That's hanging on by your fingernails." Inadequate funding is just one reason why so many haven't made it onto the land. The program also has been plagued by mismanagement, prompting widespread alle- 'Doesn't include 16,000 acres being transferred from the state on all Islands, against the trust during the state's watch. "It's possible we didn't identify all the claims." While the panel dealt with most, if not all, of the solid land disputes, he said, it never looked into other questionable lands or tackled such issues as improper water use and the agency's failure to use all its appropriated funds. But if the settlement statute is challenged and any part found to be void or illegal, King said, then the statute says it would be void. "And nobody's wanted to take that on their heads." Has the tide turned? Many Hawai ians are waiting to see if the state will honor its latest promise to pay, especially in these tough economic times.

Others, like Hawaiian Homes Chairman Kali Watson, think the tide of abuse and neglect has turned. Besides the $600 million settlement the state is transferring.