GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Former Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee Adelaide "Frenchy" DeSoto and Wayne Panoke were among those at Honolulu Hale yesterday voicing opposition to a controversial leasehold conversion bill.
Council votes The Honolulu City Council voted 5-4 last night to advance a bill to bolster its controversial mandatory leasehold conversion law despite emotional testimony from scores of native Hawaiians and others worried that the decision will hurt trusts designed to help them.
to advance leasehold
conversion bill
The final showdown on the
controversial bill may come Aug. 7By Gordon Y.K. Pang
gpang@starbulletin.comMembers voting for the measure were John Henry Felix, the bill's lead introducer, and Duke Bainum, Steve Holmes, Gary Okino and Jon Yoshimura. Opposed were Council Chairman John DeSoto and Darrlyn Bunda, Romy Cachola and Ann Kobayashi.
Felix, chairman of the Executive Affairs Committee, said the matter will not be heard next week, as previously scheduled.
Instead, he will convene a separate meeting during which he expects to be briefed by city attorneys about the issue, Felix said today. The time of the meeting has not been determined.
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Hawaiians packed the City Council chambers yesterday afternoon to oppose Bill 53.
The leasehold conversion law allows qualified leasehold owner-occupants to gain title to the land under their units by using the city's powers of eminent domain, or condemnation, to force the owners of the fee interest into selling at a price determined by an independent party.
While leaseholders claim the law is the only way to gain title to the land at a reasonable cost, critics say it is an abuse of the city's condemnation powers to take property from one party and hand it to another.
The bill discussed last night came about after the Hawaii Supreme Court issued an opinion in late June that threw the city's 1991 condominium leasehold conversion act into limbo by curtailing the number of eligible owner-occupants.
The bill seeks to increase the number who could qualify.
At the heart of the uncertainty is the court's interpretation that the current law says that no conversion action can begin unless a minimum of either 25 owner-occupants or 50 percent of the owners of all units in a project agree to the action.
The Council had contended the law means either 25 owner-occupants or 50 percent of owner-occupants.
Advocates of lease-to-fee conversion said that adding absentee owners into the percentage would severely curtail the number of leasehold buildings, and lessees, eligible for conversion. The bill discussed last night would , in essence, once again allow condemnation action to begin with 50 percent of owner-occupants.
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Councilmen Duke Bainum and John Henry Felix conferred as testimony was being taken.
More than 90 people spoke at the meeting, nearly all of them opponents of the bill and many of them advocates of the nonprofit Queen Liliuokalani Trust, which funds more than 300 social programs in part from revenues derived from lease interest fees.
Foster Tower, a Waikiki condominium complex owned by the trust, is among those going through the conversion process.
Thomas Kaulukukui Jr., chairman of the board for the Liliuokalani Trust, said that Foster Tower and three other leasehold properties represent between 11 percent and 15 percent of the $14 million it collects in annual revenues and that selling the fee interests could result in a reduction in program funding.
But Kaulukukui and other trust supporters noted that condemning Liliuokalani lease property in Waikiki is about more than money. It is a rallying point for native Hawaiians because the land is where Hawaii's last reigning monarch lived, they said.
"Among Hawaiians today, the queen's trust is the most cherished of all the trusts," said Lono Correa, who testified against the bill.
When bill opponents Robin Makapagai and Janee Miller broke into the traditional Hawaiian song "Kaulana Na Pua," nearly the entire audience stood up and sang along. The song, the title of which means "Famous are the flowers," is a metaphor about Hawaiians rallying to Liliuokalani's defense.
Kilohana Duarte, representing Pohai O Kamehameha, the Royal Order of Kamehameha I, said the bill serves the interest of only a few private individuals and would harm many more.
"Revenues derived from (trust properties) support many programs within the Queen Liliuokalani Children's Centers throughout the state of Hawaii, programs that reach into the very soul of Hawaii's communities and provide services for na keiki o ka 'aina," Duarte said.
Robert Malandra, a Honolulu fire captain, was one of the few people supporting the bill.
A single parent, Malandra said his condominium was heading for conversion when the Supreme Court decision put it on hold.
"I'm not trying to undo any trusts. I'm just trying to live out my life in the home that I own," he said.
Council members on both sides acknowledged that the issue is one of the toughest they have faced.
Yoshimura, a longtime advocate of leasehold conversion, said, "I don't want to see people lose their homes" but that he wants the issue debated further by the Council.
Cachola said he is worried about the potential of needing to pay for legal fees if the city loses to parties taking it to court.
"If this bill passes, we can anticipate that all landowners ... will challenge the constitutionality of (the bill)," he said.
Okino said he supports the bill but will ultimately vote against any condemnation action against Foster Tower or any other Liliuokalani Trust property.
