Editorials
Friday, July 17, 1998

Needed assistance
for homesteaders

NATIVE Hawaiians understandably have been angered and frustrated about delays in implementation of the Hawaiian Homes program. It may finally get on track with recent land transfers, a court settlement with the state and a bill that has begun to move through Congress. The bill would provide block grants totaling $30 million to develop infrastructure and provide mortgage loan guarantees on Hawaiian homestead lands.

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 created the program to set aside 200,000 acres for homes of native Hawaiians, but activity was minimal for decades. The state agreed two years ago to pay $600 million in compensation for the improper use of Hawaiian lands, and transferred 92 acres on Oahu and the Big Island to the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

A bill sponsored by Senators Inouye and Akaka would provide even more impetus to get the program moving. It would make native Hawaiians eligible for assistance that is already being provided to native Alaskans and native Americans under the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act. Inouye said the bill, approved by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, "will finally assure that all eligible Hawaiian families will one day soon be able to move onto the lands that were specifically set aside for them so long ago."

Many of the 29,000 native Hawaiians now on the waiting list do not qualify for conventional mortgages to build homes on homestead land, and the bill could enable them to benefit from the program. An additional 60,000 are eligible to join them on the list. Meanwhile, nearly one-third of Hawaii's homeless are native Hawaiians.

Native Hawaiians have not been included in federal programs aimed at assisting native Americans. Passage of the bill is an important corrective measure.

Palatial fallout

THE stepping down of Jim Bartels, the longtime curator and managing director of Iolani Palace, is a sad loss for the historic edifice. The loss hurts all the more because the resignation after 20-plus years of service stems from an incident involving the palace throne, the president of the Friends of Iolani Palace and an ongoing war of personalities.

The clash came to a head in April, when Life magazine photographer Harry Benson was shooting photographs of Abigail Kawananakoa in Iolani Palace. When Benson asked if the president of the palace support group could sit on the throne for a few shots, Bartels told him, "Nobody is allowed to sit on the throne, only the real queen."

Kawananakoa, the president of the Iolani Palace support group and a prominent descendant of Hawaiian royalty, took exception to that remark. "I can sit anywhere I want," she reportedly replied. Benson then took photos of her in the throne, despite Bartels telling Kawananakoa not to sit there. "I'm sorry if this got him into trouble," the photographer told the Star-Bulletin. "(But) I think she was entitled to sit on the throne. It was a more appropriate picture."

Maybe so, but Bartels' job was to oversee the preservation of palace treasures, including the throne -- whose seat is constructed of delicate and irreplaceable threads. For Kawananakoa to overide Bartels' concerns was a questionable display of judgment and pridefulness.

Clinton fund-raising

FBI Director Louis Freeh's disagreement with Attorney General Janet Reno over her refusal to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the administration's campaign fund-raising became known last winter. Details about the rift are prompting new questions about Reno's disturbing rationale and should force her to re-evaluate it.

Reno's decision in November followed an FBI investigation of whether President Clinton and Vice President Gore had violated a law barring campaign fund-raising on federal property. Reno said the law didn't apply because the solicitations were made in telephone calls from residential areas of the White House and had not raised actual campaign money.

The sharpness and breadth of Freeh's recommendation to appoint an independent counsel can be found in a 22-page memorandum that the Justice Department has refused to release, at one point defying a subpoena by a House committee investigating campaign finance. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., learned details about the memo and confronted Reno with it at a recent hearing.

According to Thompson, Freeh's memo pointed out that the FBI's investigation "had led them to the highest levels of the White House, including the vice president and the president, and therefore the Department of Justice must look at the independent counsel statute." The memo described Reno's refusal to appoint an independent counsel as starkly inconsistent with her actions in other investigations.

Reno insisted compliance with the law, noting her department's indictment of 11 people in its campaign finance investigation. But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., pointed out that the indicted were donors, while recipients in the White House or Democratic Party went uncharged. Reno complained that Thompson, in citing passages from the memo, was disclosing confidential material. Of greater importance is whether Reno is attempting to keep confidential any illegal activity in the White House.

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