Hawaii’s World

By A.A. Smyser

Tuesday, April 22, 1997

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Office of Hawaiian
Affairs improves

THE Office of Hawaiian Affairs at last is attaining the stature its creators in the 1978 State Constitutional Convention must have wanted for it. The state auditor has just declared it is doing a first-rate job of handling and growing its $245 million in assets.

This and Chairman Clayton Hee's re-election for two years by a changed board of trustees have strengthened Hee's hand as a spokesman on Hawaiian matters. For the present, he says, OHA is the closest thing we have to a sovereign Hawaiian entity.

He has emerged as a tough negotiator for Hawaiian interests who gives off just enough hints that he realizes final settlements will also have to recognize the interests of the nearly 1 million other people in the state who have no Hawaiian blood at all.

He has begun talk of settling some Hawaiian claims with land, even landmarks, rather than cash. OHA has the right to own land.

Hee appeared on public radio's "Price of Paradise" program Sunday morning with state Rep. Ed Case, who has turned out to be a very well-informed and judicious chairman of Hawaiian Affairs for the House of Representatives. Case is a lifelong Hawaii resident but not a Hawaiian.

I come pretty close to thinking that if they, between them, could negotiate what Case calls "a global resolution" of Hawaiian concerns most of the rest of us could buy into it.

It might be the kind of solution we are about to see at the Legislature on same-sex marriage -- not what the extremists on either side demanded but a pretty good compromise sensitive to the interests of both sides.

We won't have same-gender marriage under this plan but same-gender couples will get most of the economic benefits of marriage.

Under the umbrella of a "global resolution" are problems with tremendous cultural, emotional and economic considerations. For example:

How can we protect traditional Hawaiian gathering rights as required by a 1978 constitutional amendment without unduly abridging private property rights and thus stifling economic development?

What is a fair share for Hawaiians of the revenues from 1.2 million acres of former Hawaiian crown lands still held by the state?

How will the blood quantum questions be resolved? The Hawaiian Homes program is restricted to people of 50 percent Hawaiian blood. Many OHA revenues are similarly restricted. This is a group of about 40,000 people. What about the 180,000 or so other people with Hawaiian blood?

What will be the form of an eventual Hawaiian sovereign entity? Forget any near-term talk of independence from the U.S.

Hee contends the Hawaiian cause is a quest for justice rather than an economic issue. Betterment of Hawaiian people is the goal.

BUT that inevitably has its economic side and the state has scarce resources to allocate in many deserving areas -- education, health, social welfare, public security and environmental protection among them.

It also has to promote a strong economy to produce the tax revenues to cover these needs.

Now in conference as the Legislature winds up its 1997 session is a measure to ward off excessive state liability under a 1996 district court ruling, to set an interim ceded land payment to OHA of $15 million a year while differences are thrashed out by a panel representing the governor on one side and OHA on the other, and to allow two litigation-stalled housing projects to go forward.

Failure to enact such a bill could very well force a major state economic crisis.

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