OHA asks governor Holding Gov. Linda Lingle to a campaign promise, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs this week will ask her for immediate payment of at least $10.3 million in undisputed revenue from ceded land.
for land revenue
Lingle's aide says she intends
to honor her campaign promiseBy Pat Omandam
pomandam@starbulletin.com
Lingle, during a OHA-sponsored gubernatorial debate in early November, said if elected, she would immediately move to transfer that money to OHA.
"She does stand by that line and she is going to live up to that statement," said Lenny Klompus, Lingle's communications director, yesterday.
OHA administrator Clyde Namuo said yesterday the agency, whose mission is the betterment of conditions for Hawaiians, will send the governor a letter today or tomorrow asking that tab be paid.
"It would ask for an immediate payment and it would also indicate that ongoing payments should continue to be made until such times that the ceded lands issue are resolved in the long term," Namuo said.
A new OHA board of trustees will be sworn in today.
The $10.3 million in revenue OHA wants covers the period from July 2001 to September 2002. It is called undisputed money because it does not include controversial unpaid revenue from community hospitals, state affordable housing and duty-free concession leases that sit on ceded land.
OHA sued the state in 1994 for back payments from these additional sources of revenue and a July 1996 ruling by then-Circuit Judge Daniel Heely ruled in favor of OHA.
The state appealed the Heely decision to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which, after failed negotiations between OHA and the state, ruled in September 2001 that the 1990 state law that calculated OHA revenue payments is moot.
That ruling put a stop to state payments to OHA that ranged from $10.8 million in 1991 to $25 million in 1995 to $8.2 million in 2001.
The Hawaii high court said the law, Act 304, had a severability clause that invalidated it if it conflicted with federal law. The court said it did conflict with a 1998 federal law that banned the use of airport-related money to pay claims related to ceded land.
The remedy, the court said, was a new state law calculating revenue to OHA. The Legislature did not act on the issue this year, but there are hopes the Lingle administration will help push it through.
Namuo, however, believes Lingle doesn't need legislative authority to disburse those undisputed funds and she can just order her departments to resume making quarterly payments to OHA from money they collect from these former public trust or crown land.
"We believe that the law and the Constitution is enough authority for her to make those disbursements," Namuo said.
During her inauguration speech Monday, Lingle said she wants to resolve the ceded land issue in a way that honors and respects native Hawaiians and takes into account non-Hawaiians. She asked Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona to spearhead the issue.
Trustee Rowena Akana, who led OHA's negotiation team in 1998, said she's begun briefing Aiona's office on the history of the dispute and is hopeful for a resolution.
Office of Hawaiian Affairs