SB1555, which creates a Public Land Development Corporation empowered to select state land to be set aside for private development, was largely unnoticed as it passed through the legislature during the 2011 session.
It was a Section 7 of the bill that drew most attention, a provision requiring the Department of Land and Natural Resources to issue a request for proposals for commercial development of the land surrounding the harbor. Permitted uses would have included hotels, timeshares and residences (condominiums?) up to 350 feet in height, along with restaurants, retail shops, and boat-related businesses, as well as a “seawater air conditioning facility.”
Testimony on the bill focused mainly on the Ala Wai harbor development. Residents of the Ilikai, for example, spoke against the prospect of a 350 foot hotel tower located in the harbor parking lot, which would block existing views from surrounding buildings. The only place where hotel development appeared in the initial bill was in the section dealing with commercial development of the Ala Wai. Broader application of the same approach to privatization and commercialization of state land does not appear to have been anticipated by those presenting testimony.
A 2-page analysis of the Ala Wai development proposal by Chuck Prentiss, former executive secretary of the Honolulu Planning Commission, warned the commercialization of the harbor and similar state lands could violate the “public trust” provisions of the State Constitution.
Prentiss wrote:
The DLNR proposal to privatize the Ala Wai Boat Harbor appears to run afoul of the State Constitution, and Supreme Court decisions discussed above, including the fact that no statement or study has been prepared by DLNR which indicates that the need to privatize the Ala Wai Harbor is so compelling that the protection should be surrendered. The Ala Wai Harbor privatization is inconsistent with the public trust doctrine as it has evolved. It also means that the public would no longer have affordable public access. Exclusionary slip fees, prohibitive launch ramp fees, limited personal and vehicle access will effectively deny the public the access it should enjoy by right.
The land and waters of the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor in the heart of Waikiki are a tempting prize for entrepreneurs. But despite its location, it is a major public trust recreational resource for purposes that have been specifically identified by the Hawaii Supreme Court as such, i.e. beaches, boating, fishing etc. Additionally, privatizing this area would set a precedent to do the same with other trust recreational resources such as other small boat harbors, or giving long-term leases of State camping cabins to hotel chains.
The final draft of the bill that emerged from conference committee retained the broad authority to privatize public lands, but dropped the specific directive to proceed with commercialization of the Ala Wai.
Several legislators said the potentially far-reaching provisions for privatization of public lands received little open discussion as SB1555 worked its way through the legislature.
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Seems to me as though this is a thinly veiled attempt to help rail by freeing up state lands along the proposed routes for development. Apart from developing public land, though, the PLDC has broad powers to acquire equity shares in start-up enterprises (no link to public land apparently needed). It seems in this regard to duplicate what the HTDC is already supposed to be doing.
You’re right: the only public testimony submitted was from boaters and condo owners. Where were the environmental groups when this bill was being heard? Did they think it was “only” about boating?
After years of controversy with the Honolulu City rail project, and after the machinations of and the barrage of silly propaganda from City bureaucrats, politicians, unions and so forth, it would be easy to expect that there would be some kind of angle on the part of the government to develop rail through some back-room chicanery.
But this is the State, not the City, and it is Abercrombie’s agenda, not Hannemann’s. The Governor has never really seemed to show any interest in the rail project, and looking over the reviews of the New Day agenda, the rail project does not seem to be mentioned once.
Also, it’s important to remember just how disorganized and inconsistent the rail propaganda was, first focusing on traffic, then jobs, then transit-oriented development, then later alternative energy (!). So where we expect to find a grand conspiracy by developers, what we find is just a big mess of confusion driven by hapless small-town politicians who contradict themselves six times a minute. Of course, at least one of those City council members is on the payroll of developers. But even the developers seem confused, as they push for the rail project but refuse to buy land near where stations would be located. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, even when it does not work. Real estate is in decline, so the response of the developers is to build new houses. The developers don’t seem to know what they are doing.
The question is, does Abercrombie seem to know what he is doing?
The following article written a half a year ago in Civil Beat notes that Abercrombie seemed to come up with a bunch of vague principles and then delegate authority to let others figure out what those principles mean. In the words of Chad Blair:
“In this sense, Abercrombie’s leadership model — as evinced recently with letting Bill Kaneko take care of all the hiring — thus far resembles that of Ronald Reagan’s or George W. Bush’s: Explain what you want, make others do the heavy lifting and then render a final verdict.”
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2010/12/06/7110-dissecting-abercrombies-new-day/
There is thus the real possibility that Abercrombie is largely unfamiliar with what his underlings exactly want to do. He might have had generalized notions of “public-private partnerships”, but he did not have in mind the kind of wholesale privatization that might actually take place.
How good or bad this turns out remains to be seen but undert-the-radar lawmaking usually is mesy and wrong.
This seems like a good example of inadequate reporting and vetting of the legislature when it is in session,.I doubt this would have happened a year ago in a two-nwspaper world.
http://statehoodhawaii.org/2011/06/28/dlnr_plop/
Consider the timing of this Bill– four months before the upcoming APEC meetings in November ?where CEOs, financiers, bankers, trade ministers, business executives and ?government officials are meeting– now think, Disneyland, Monsanto, shopping malls, ?energy/gmo bio-tech/fuels, water, large transnational private investment firms leasing and developing our resources as public funds gets redirected to develop infrastructure projects like roads, utilities, security, etc…