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Interim trustees at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs have begun talks on the agency's biennium budget, but not before hearing from OHA observers on what they should and should not do during their remaining six weeks in office. OHA’s interim
budget committee
gets earful from
longtime observersBy Pat Omandam
Star-Bulletin"I want all of you trustees to be independent, think very carefully, review what is going to be put in front of you," said Johanna Lawrence.
"I hope you folks will not be rubber stamps, because that is the feeling out in the community that that's why you were selected. And we've had enough of that here in this office," said Lawrence, a regular OHA meeting attendee who was arrested at OHA a year ago following a disruptive board meeting.
OHA watcher Lela Hubbard urged trustees to respond to her long-standing requests of past trustees for a cost breakdown of OHA's reception in Washington, D.C., last year during the Rice vs. Cayetano appeal and for the cost of the security system installed at OHA a few years ago.
Hubbard, one of 97 OHA candidates in November, also asked trustees to review written minutes of past board meetings because in the past these minutes have been edited to make board debate on issues sound cordial and nice when it was not.
"That doesn't happen at OHA regularly," Hubbard said. "There are battles."
Six interim trustees met yesterday to convene the first OHA Budget and Finance Committee meeting since the entire nine-member board resigned Sept. 8 to avoid legal action by the state to remove them from office.
Gov. Ben Cayetano promptly appointed trustees to fill their seats, including three trustees who had resigned.
A sign of the interim board's short stay in office was the use of paper, not wooden, nameplates at the board's large koa table.
Meta Doane Nicola, another OHA regular, told the trustees she was dismayed that interim board Chairman Clayton Hee was made a member of the Budget Committee. Nicola said Hee undermined the work of the previous budget chairwoman to get his own budget passed by the board.
"I am of the opinion that he was very instrumental in creating and perpetuating the appearances of dysfunction between the former trustees," Nicola said.
Hee did not attend yesterday's meeting because he was in Washington, D.C., to support the Akaka bill.
Interim trustee Dante Carpenter, a former OHA administrator, agreed the board chairman should not sit on the money committee, but wants the remaining eight to do so. Also, he wants trustees to pick a vice chairman of the panel.
Budget Chairwoman Hannah Springer said those actions must first be put on the OHA agenda for a future board meeting.
The full interim board will meet Monday. All but one interim trustee, Gladys Brandt, are seeking election to their appointed seats.
Meanwhile, OHA chief financial officer Joan Bolte said OHA plans to take its proposed biennium budget into the Hawaiian community for feedback in the next few weeks.
Bolte said the agency is proposing an overall budget of $14.8 million for fiscal year 2002 and $14.5 million for 2003. Those totals include an annual no-growth general fund budget of $2.5 million each year from the state, which the Cayetano administration had requested, she said.
The two-year budget is split into a personnel budget that would fund OHA's new four-division organization, and an operating budget comprised of general operation, special purpose and subsidy accounts.
The proposed time frame for board approval is Nov. 6, the day before the general election.
The OHA budget briefings will be held from 6 to 8 p.m., on Monday in Waimanalo; Tuesday in Nanakuli; Oct. 3 in Hilo, Kona and Kahului; Oct. 4 in Kalamaula, Molokai; and Oct. 5 in Lihue.
Call OHA at 594-1888 or visit its Web site at http://www.oha.org for more information.