Just because the City Council last week rejected a bill to help lessees doesn't mean it's ready to repeal the mandatory conversion ordinance for leasehold condominiums. Council likely to defer
repeal of leasehold law
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
gpang@starbulletin.comSeveral key Council members say they would prefer to put off discussion until next year on Bill 82.
The bill would repeal the ordinance allowing lessees to use the city's condemnation powers to gain the fee simple interests under their building.
Meanwhile, a coalition dedicated to helping lessees has been resurrected in the face of recent setbacks.
Bill 82 is to be heard on first reading by Council members tomorrow.
But Councilman Gary Okino said yesterday he would not support sending the bill to the Executive Matters Committee, a Council committee of the whole. "My inclination is to vote it down," Okino said.
Okino was considered the swing vote on Bill 53 that would have allowed more lessees to participate in mandatory conversion but was shelved. "I voted against (for deferral of) Bill 53 because I think we have a constitutionally and legislatively solid Chapter 38 (leasehold conversion ordinance) that's kind of fair."
Okino said he is not opposed to hearing Bill 82, but thinks the new Council in January should do it.
Six of the nine Council seats are still up for grabs in November. Okino, Romy Cachola and Ann Kobayashi, the only incumbents up for re-election, have already been re-elected.
Cachola and Kobayashi said that while they won't vote against first-reading approval of Bill 82 tomorrow, they also don't think the outgoing Council should decide whether to repeal the city's mandatory conversion bill.
Cachola said he wants a "cooling-off period" so that both sides in the emotional debate can look at ramifications. "There has to be more discussion, and I don't see this Council being the final arbiter on whether it passes," he said.
Kobayashi said she has serious concerns about the concept of mandatory conversion but wants to see the legal ramifications of repealing a decade-old law before deciding to support Bill 82. "It's very difficult to change a law that's been in existence for 10 years," she said.
Council Chairman John DeSoto introduced the repeal bill Wednesday, hours after the Executive Matters Committee deferred Bill 53.
The state Supreme Court said the city had been wrongly interpreting its own rule and that only a minimum of 25 lessees or 50 percent of all condominium owners could petition for condemnation. Bill 53 would have allowed 50 percent of owner-occupants, not all owners, to be eligible.
In related news, the Hale Coalition said it was reorganizing to support leasehold reform issues under the leadership of Jane Sugimura, president of the Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners.
Its focus, the organization said, would be to support political candidates who favor their cause, mobilize lessees and encourage them to be more vocal, make more lessees eligible under Chapter 38 and to defeat Bill 82.
