The Lingle administration campaigned on a pledge to cut the waiting list for leases at the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

But the plan has turned out to be a back-door land grab by commercial and development interests. Lingle has proceeded by cutting funding for the agency and forcing DHHL to rely on income from commercial leases, most of those to non-Hawaiians.

The House yesterday gave an unfortunate boost to that land grab by passing SB 638. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Clayton Hee, started out as a two-year moratorium on evictions of residents from Kahana Valley, which is now a state park. It was prompted by state attempts to evict several families last year.

But the House Committee on Water, Land, and Ocean Resources morphed the bill by tacking on an unrelated provision to allow the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to issue 99-year renewable commercial leases, essentially encumbering land permanently under corporate control.

According to the committee report:

Finally, your Committee has further amended this measure by adding a new part to this measure containing the substance of provisions contained in H.B. No. 949, H.D. 1, previously heard by your Committee, relating to authorizing the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) to negotiate and enter into project development agreements and long-term commercial leases for terms not exceeding 99 years. As amended, this bill also provides that at the termination of the lease, the prior lessee may be extended, as a provision of the initial lease, a right of first refusal to extend the lease subject to the terms of any public auction, so long as the prior lessee matches the highest lease rental bid offered during the public auction. Further, as part of this process, DHHL may enter into consultations with the beneficiaries of the home lands trust on any such commercial lease.

DHHL was able to get support from some beneficiaries, who believe that alienation of a key portion of their land base is the only way to provide residential or agricultural leases to those on the waiting list.

That impression is being furthered by an administration-backed move to cut off general fund support to DHHL and make the agency raise all of its own funds.

The Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation says this runs directly counter to key provisions of the State Constitution. A column published in the current issue of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs newspaper looks back at the deliberations of the 1978 Constitutional Convention.

Accordingly, they adopted a provision that required the state to provide “sufficient sums” to pay for all Hawaiian homestead costs, including the “administrative and operating budget” of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL). The delegates proposed to make it “expressly clear that the legislature is to fund DHHL” in order to rectify chronic underfunding of the program since its inception in 1921. In fact, the committee report stated that the constitutional amendment would “no longer allow the legislature discretion in this area.” Hawai’i voters ratified this constitutional amendment.

Attorney Alan Murakami met earlier with the Legislative Hawaiian Caucus to discuss these constitutional concerns over the plan to cut public funds for DHHL. It isn’t clear whether members of the Hawaiian Caucus were aware at the time of yesterday’s vote that the 99-year lease provision had been added into SB638.

NHLC is also pressing a lawsuit challenging the state’s failure to comply with the constitutional mandate, which I wrote about last year.

Did you catch Monday’s story in the Advertiser about cats being shot and killed at the Kapaa Quarry Industrial Park? It’s not a pretty story. And there’s more.

According to the story:

The Humane Society USA is offering a $2,500 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the shootings.

You might notice that there is no information given on where to report tips that might qualify for the reward.

Cat advocates say they’ve been told that the reward has to be funneled through either HPD or the Hawaiian Humane Society before it can be offered to the public, but neither agency has agreed to accept the reward offer.

It would be good to know whether that understanding is correct or not.

Okay, it’s time to go watch the sunrise, although the heavy clouds this morning look like they’ll block any view of the sun.