Updated 1/8/13: Just finished the first rough transcript. Scroll to the bottom.
This post is going to be rewritten and edited, but in the meantime, here goes. Originally, I thought I would have been able to post the three transcripts of three video clips, but it has taken longer than I expected.
Here are three videos taken at the December 3rd, 2012 Upcountry Sustainability meeting in Pa'ia, Maui featuring Lucienne de Naie and Mahina Martin's presentation on the Public Lands Development Corporation, Act 55. This is a big threat to public lands on islands, including prime farm lands on Oahu, watershed land, and pristine land like the Ahihi-Kinau natural area on Maui. There is one more video I hope to add later.
Rough transcript of video clip 1:
Mahina: To repeal the bill you learn about tonight
and make some changes, or lose that battle and wait for another year for it to
come again. And by then we’ll need your… that’s why we’re here for you… and to
share our thoughts on this…
Lucienne: We have these little hand outs the cliff
notes version of what you can do, who you can write… where you can go. Mahina: Lucienne
will also talk a little about the Sierra Club.
Lucienne: the end of the 6 week period is the start
of the legislative session… Once it starts, things happen very quickly. Mahina
as you can tell.
Lucienne: Thank you to Upcountry Sustainability. I
think Mahina and I are very grateful for this. We kind of rubbed elbows at the
same meeting in august, and thought somebody should start getting the troops
educated here and getting the word out. My name’s Lucienne de Naie. I’m an
activist with a couple of different organizations but I’ve served as an officer
chair and another officer statewide of the Sierra club. The sierra club is one
of the few organizations in Hawaii
Video jumps forward…
Lucienne: It’s …very, very broad powers and very,
very vague language, and usually things like that don’t accomplish what they
intended to do. I see Gladys nodding here (referring to Maui County Council Chair
Gladys Baisa in the audience). She’s seen a few things like that. So without
further ado…
Mahina: And on the intent of raising money for
DLNR. Although they’re cash strapped and they’re definitely in need of that, we
don’t believe this is the way. And quite frankly, if you look at the larger
projects that they want to do, if you think about it, do you think that money
is going to show up magically in their budget for 2013 -2014? No, so, aside
from the $100 filing fee for someone who wants to propose a project, we can’t
detect any cash flowing into DLNR soon enough, safe enough and adequately
enough. To that point, we really would challenge this idea that it will create
money for a cash-strapped department. Clearly, it’s just not the way. So, we’re
going to talk a little about the PLDC and we still laugh about how the first
two words are public land followed by development.
Slide shows the legislative building, with words
“How did PLDC originate?”
Mahina: That’s exactly where it started. Last year,
this is actually two yrs ago coming January. But last year, the Senate had a
bill that came through. Out of this idea by Senator Malama Solomon and Senator
Donovan Delacruz, which all of you probably know by know, is a … [unclear] of
this bill.
They started on the Senate and it was known as
Senate Bill 1555. It was pretty quiet. Everyone agreed. DLNR needed money.
Let’s look at something. The original version even included representation by
the neighbor islands on the so called “power board” and eventually it got
deleted.
In a fast switch, 23 days later, it made its way to
the House and major revisions including removal of neighbor island representation,
and a five member board, four of which have no cultural history experience
background. They’re all actually financial, finance people, which is red flag
#1 for us.
But there was a lot of movement that went through
the House and Senate pretty quick and before you know it, it showed up on the
finance committee and they along, this is the committee – but Calvin Say who
our own… [?] Joseph is trying to unseat.
House speaker Calvin Say allowed for waiving the
48-hour rule so in essence it gave the public, whether you’re in Hana or
Haleiwa or anywhere else or Lihue. You only had 115 minutes to hustle on over
there and raise your objections. So, of course, Gary
And you can’t waive that, but they did. 115 minutes.
We’re not making this up, there are records. We actually went into research and
tracked it down to when these things made it through the legislature. So already we know this isn’t good. Most of
us are pretty dormant, we just don’t know this is happening because this is
2011 of last year.
Eventually… it makes its way through and it lands
on Governor Abercrombie’s desk, and as you know, he can sign it into law or let
it become law. So in a very rapid manner, it got signed into law. It lies
dormant for a while, and now here we are in 2012.
(Slide asks, “What are Hawaii Kingdom of Hawaii Lanai said “How
come we’re not included, and we never got an answer to that?”
Lucienne: No public lands.
Mahina: No public lands. And the interesting part
with that is that as they were going around to get public input on what is
known as the administrative rules, the rules that will help them govern and
move and maneuver their way through their authority and power, they were
already in discussions with public lands. In July in fact, Mr. Haraguchi (sp?),
the executive director, had already met with two organizations, two potential
developers to talk about prime farm land on Oahu .
Prime farm land we use currently now.
And in July, he met with a group called the Relativity
Video and Access Land Lease, one to create workforce housing and one to create
a sound state studio. So they were already in discussions before July. They had
no rules and were discussing the project. They did not have full authority but
were already in motion. So we started paying attention because it was becoming
a little too quick under the radar. So by the time it came to us, the public,
we had a lot of questions including the community….
Lucienne: Let me jump in here. Hugh Starr reminded
me that the very first incarnation of this bill was only about the Ala Wai Boat
Harboar and another small harbor on Oahu ,
Ke’ehi Lagoon, and it just sort of morphed in to this million acre deal on
public lands across the state. And as we all know our public lands are mostly
on the neighbor islands. Most of the public lands are you know.. Maui County
Q: How did the public lands become public lands?
Lucienne: As it says here (slide), most of the
public lands were once owned by monarchy and the Kingdom of Hawaii
I had a personal presentation by Senator Delacruz
and he was so proud, “Look we have this park here that no one’s doing anything
with and we could do wonderful things, like we have a private group that wants
to come and build cabins and build a restaurant and build that.
And it was interesting because there were a couple
of citizens there that said we have a nonprofit group that’s been working with
this park for years and DLNR will never give us a lease to do anything.
Why all of a sudden from some corporation you’re
all interested in doing something but if a local community group that wants to
invest funds here, you just kind of pushed us away. It just didn’t make a lot
of sense so a lot of what’s at stake here on Maui – we have Makena State Beach,
Hawaiian Home Lands, everything in light green or dark green are public lands
in South Maui.
If you go on to East Maui ,
thousands of acres of our rainforest and you can see a lot of lands along the
coast too. Someone might think, “Wow, that’d be a nice place for a resort.”
Upcountry, we have Hawaiian Home Lands. We have our wonderful state forest
reserves at Polipoli, we have our Makawao state forest reserves. Once again, a
lot of stake, and then in Central Maui a lot of the areas that are our
watershed land, and above Haiku and Huelo and these were all crown lands. And
it really … the water rights upcountry.
What if someone came along, some Chinese firm and
offered to pay more than A & B and lease them to extract water. Would we
have a say, and of course the answer is no. We need to do something about this
bill. I’m handing it back to you.
Mahina: This is actually what the bill itself looks
like. And its description, I’ll read it to you, it’s actually a 32 page
document but essentially it allows for a law. (video clipped)This law, act 55
once it was signed, senate Bill 55. but it allowed, it gave them the authority
to take the initiative and use their scope of authority and defined, determined
which public lands would bring the most opportune commercialization, revenue
generating projects to help DLNR. That is the full stroke of what they can do.
And that’s the biggest fear that we have. So, a 5 member board which we’re
looking at right now…
Their chair is the director of finance, Calvin
Young, and they also have William (?) over here on the far end…. The deputy
director of DBED (Dept of Business and Economic Development)… and two
appointees… one a former developer Duane Kurisu…and one an attorney, Bobby Bunda,
former legislator… If they’re sitting around a circle, a board meeting and a
project comes up to them, someone says how much can this make us. That’s what
drives the decision making, and that’s the fear. Their decisions are not, their
priority, their interest is not to protect and preserve but to seek out what
the inventory of lands are and to be the most revenue generating for that
purpose to give the money back into the state.
I want to point this out, because this is the portion
of the administrative rules. After we met in August, they got heat, almost 1000
people on all the islands combined came and threw the book at them. So they
said “All right, we’ll consider it.”
Lucienne: And …they made specific suggestions about
the rules. A lot of people said oh we don’t like this, this is just terrible.
But there were people who did their homework and said we should change this
paragraph. We should make the rules different this way. And mahina was one of
them. But did they listen? No.
Mahina: But what was interesting is that in the
original administrative rules proposed in August. If you read it through, the
whole document was peppered with the word “developer, developer, developer” Now
I’m going to tell you now, I’m not anti development, but I’m anti stupid.
And I don’t appreciate someone defining what that
is for a community unless they live in it. And that’s why we are going on the
road…
So I want you to see what they did. They changed
every word that said “developer” into something called project, proposed,
entrepreneur. They softened it to the degree that they took out what they
thought was gonna get people’s hair raising. They keep insisting there was
community input. They would retain it, maintain it, commit to it. …
And yet (hard to understand) it states on the far
right/line at least one people meeting in the community affected, one, just
one. So the process is someone will come to them with a proposal, pay $100,
which used to be $500 but somehow it got changed. It’s a $100 fee now. They
turn in their financials, do a nice form, make sure that they have the
background for it.
The board’s executive director, Mr. Haraguchi (sp?)
reviews it, to see if it meets the minimum of what they want. It gets
recommended to this five member board. The board asks its questions, are you
sure you’re solvent, are you sure you can make money, whatever whatever. You’re
required to have one public meeting.
Go to Wailuku, let’s say it’s going to be Iao Valley Honolulu
Q from audience: Has anything gone through yet?
Mahina: They were trying, but they backed off…
Q: …A lot of people had no knowledge.. how would
you officially stop rhetoric?
Mahina: In my personal opinion, I think …hold? Put?
your feet to the fire when you see see it rear its ugly head. Q: is there a
standard to hold your feet to the fire? What about due process, which is the
recommended rule under every state under federal compliance…? Why don’t we use
that?
Mahina: Well they’re supposed to follow sunshine
laws…
Commenter who asked initial question: Well if
they’re not fulfilling their obligation under federal law… this state has the
right to turn every official for lack of due process.
(?Not sure who replied to this):The state has an
exemption. They’re not under the sunshine laws, so they can do anything they
want…. 48 hours..
Commenter: that’s not true…
(End of first video – remember this is a rough,
imprecise transcript)
ok
ReplyDelete