OHA lobbies
for retirement
benefits

Trustees send a proposal
for equal state treatment among
13 bills for 1999

By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

State law calls the Office of Hawaiian Affairs a quasi-sovereign agency. But Hawaiian sovereignty groups have called it an agency of the state.

And the OHA board of trustees yesterday proposed a bill that would give them an equal benefit offered to other elected officials: eligibility in the state retirement plan.

The trustees approved 13 bills to submit to the 1999 state Legislature. One bill would allow them to join the state retirement plan. Currently they have no retirement plan, and state law specifically excludes them from state retirement.

Newly elected trustee Mililani Trask said OHA "pretended" to be quasi-sovereign in the past. "I've always said it was a state agency and as such, we should be part of the retirement system," said Trask, active in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. "It's a basic entitlement of all workers."

OHA is represented in court as a state agency, follows state budget procedures, and is subject to the sunshine law.

"It's a division of government for the Hawaiians," she said. "The Democrats weren't happy that we might have more power, so they decided to be petty: If they have this, let's take away retirement."

Governor may lend support

The OHA trustees are elected by native Hawaiians. "I see it as total racism," she said.

The government's share of retirement payments, she added, would be small because trustee pay is low: $37,000 a year for the chairwoman and $32,000 for the other eight trustees.

Trask said Gov. Ben Cayetano has indicated he would support the bill.

Of the 13 bills approved yesterday, six were introduced last year.

Bills include:

OHA must sign off on any changes made by the state to ceded lands, or public lands held by the state as a trust in part for Hawaiians. The bill was introduced last year.

An OHA representative would be named to the Hawaii Tourism Authority and the Commission on Water Resource Management. Reintroduced bills would ask the same on the Board of Land and Natural Resources and the Land Use Commission.

The state would sell to 51 families with long-term homestead leases their leased land for $1. The land totals 167 acres, and 49 of the families are at least part native Hawaiian. The law currently says the homestead families must pay the current appraised value.

Steve Morse, OHA housing officer, said the families cannot afford to pay appraised values, and their leases prevent them from qualifying for mortgages or home-improvement loans. Morse said most of the families live in substandard housing.

Land for $1; help for Lanai

He added, however, that the leases are on ceded lands, and the $1 conveyance could cause problems with other ceded lands.

The trustees also passed a proposed amendment to the budget to fund $28,000 for a part-time health and human services worker for six months on Lanai, home to 300 native Hawaiians. Trustee Colette Machado, who represents the islands of Molokai and Lanai, said native Hawaiians on Lanai have serious health problems but have received little help from OHA. "These are our people," Machado said. After a lifetime of living plantation-style, "they dream to be Hawaiian."

The trustees also voted to name Gladys Ainoa Brandt to the OHA Education Foundation and to earmark specific fixed-income portfolios handling the $10 million education fund to funnel money to the foundation.

OHA Chairwoman Rowena Akana said the foundation has made little progress in its five years and the move yesterday would help. So far, the fund has paid out $1.2 million for scholarships. The trustees also voted to review in committee the foundation's trustees and its memorandum of agreement with the foundation.