Don’t trust developers
to monitor themselvesPlan to abolish Historic Preservation
By Rowena Akana
Division endangers cultural sitesANOTHER opportunity for the people of Hawaii -- to lose! Governor Cayetano is calling for the privatization of the state Historic Preservation Division. His suggestion calls for firing the Historic Preservation Division staff, and reassigning their jobs to archaeologists who would be hired by developers to review their work.
What a sweetheart deal this is -- for the developers and consultants. It will save the state money primarily because government is removing itself from most of the process. But it sells out its responsibility to monitor and prevent actions that are culturally and environmentally insensitive.
These suggestions to "pass the buck" -- by the governor and legislators -- have once again placed the general public and the Hawaiian people in the loser column.
Allowing developers to hire their own hand-picked archaeologists is tantamount to saying that all developers are not only honest and honorable, but culturally sensitive to the historic importance of our aina.
Does H-3 ring a bell? Hawaii has a history of developers trying to brush aside any consideration for the history and culture of these islands.
Giving this kind of power to developers could lead to abuses that would allow high-rise condos and shopping centers to be built on sacred refuges or burial grounds.
This form of privatization has some serious drawbacks. But the greatest concern is that it will diminish the quality of historic preservation work in Hawaii and allow greater destruction of Hawaiian sites and burials for the sake of development.
The opportunity for a developer to skew a review in his favor is great, since he is the employer of both the consultant doing the study, and the consultant reviewing it for adequacy.
The Senate has previously shown its tendency to avoid its statutory responsibilities in the handling of the burials program within the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.
For the past two years the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has funded two positions, including all the fringe benefits, for the burials program, although the statutes mandate positions for this program, and the Legislature provides funding for it.
Why is OHA funding positions for which the state has responsibility? Perhaps it's another form of privatizing. Again, the state is passing the buck.
There have been attempts to permanently move this program to OHA but, by doing so, the program would lose its purpose because OHA has no enforcement powers.
Moving this program to OHA would be detrimental to its existence unless the governor and Legislature work to grant OHA enforcement powers, as required by statute.
During the last two years I have watched what appears to be a very sinister move on the part of the administration and certain legislators to create commissions and divisions of the state government to divide and parcel out sections of ceded land, so as to remove them from the main corpus of ceded lands.
We only have to look at the bills being introduced in the Legislature to see this.
Upon statehood in 1959, the state Constitution named two beneficiaries of Hawaiian lands: the Native Hawaiians and the general public. Therefore, it is my view that the general public should be as concerned as the Hawaiian people that state government does not breach its fiduciary responsibility as trustees to the public land trust.
In the upcoming elections, we must tell our legislators that they can no longer mismanage our tax dollars and then cover up their tracks with the use of ceded land revenues.
Rowena Akana is a trustee with the
Office of Hawaiian Affairs.