The Ma`alea Mystery: Why?
In light of the manifest fiasco of the state’s lease of an acre of land at Ma’alaea, what is one to think of the staff at the state Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation?
Whatever they are, they most certainly are not forceful champions of the taxpayer’s interests. Given the charade of negotiations that culminated in the state’s signing onto a 30-year lease, one might reasonably conclude DOBOR staff were doing everything possible to help the lessor – and the public be damned.
As we document in these pages, the folks at DOBOR knew when they were involved in the talks with Don Williams that they were dealing with someone who was not the owner but who was going to purchase the land only if he had the state lined up to make the mortgage payments for him.
The folks at DOBOR had to know that the only political support for this project was the scant interest they themselves drummed up at the Legislature. Yet they continued to inform the Board of Land and Natural Resources that they were under outside pressure to seal the deal.
The folks at DOBOR have committed the state to spending $4.5 million- and possibly much more – over 30 years for land for which it has no use. And while real estate values were crashing through the floor elsewhere in Hawai`i, somehow this escaped the attention of DOBOR’s property manager, who appears to have thought it was still a seller’s market in Ma`alaea.
The unanswered question is why. What would prompt high-placed civil servants to become as gullible and guileless as a country rube at a Times-Square sidewalk game of three-card monte?
Only three answers come to mind:
They’re witless. They’re crooked. Or they’re nuts.
Whatever they are, they’re unfit to hold the public trust a second longer.
Healthy Skepticism
Whether anything can be done to reduce the state’s exposure is an open question. At the very least, however, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources should draw from this experience some important lessons.
The first of these should be: Never give DOBOR – or any other agency, for that matter – a blank check. The reasons DOBOR gave the Land Board for acquisition of the Ma`alaea property through lease were specious, to say the best. That alone should have caused the board to take a second look at the proposal – although at the time, both the chairman and the Maui Land Board member seemed to buy into the idea.
Had other board members shown some healthy skepticism, the Ma`alaea debacle might have been avoided. For this to occur, however, there would need to be a revolution in present Land Board voting practice. Since the dawn of its time, the entire board tends to fall into line with the desires of the board member representing the island where a particular project is to be undertaken.
The board has full authority to withhold lease approval until a rental fee has been negotiated. In this case, for instance, the board could easily have given DOBOR the green light to negotiate a lease while insisting that the final lease terms be presented to the board for final approval.
Early Disclosure
As a second lesson, the board should insist on compliance with the state’s environmental disclosure law, Chapter 343 of Hawai`i Revised Statutes, at the earliest possible opportunity. Had the public been informed of what the Division of Boating was up to, it is possible that some outside scrutiny would have been given to this lease long before it was consummated. The reluctance of many state agencies – and DOBOR first among them – to comply with Chapter 343 until it is absolutely, positively required to do so ill serves the public’s legitimate interests.
Accountability
If the Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation were a corporation, its executive officer and his minions would be called on the carpet to account for their behavior to stockholders and company directors. Because the public’s money is involved, however, the Division of Boating has acted – in this case and in many others, as Environment Hawai`i has disclosed over the years – as though it were accountable to no one. The fact that the money it spends comes from the Boating Special Fund, generated through small-boat harbor rentals and berthing fees, matters not in the least.
The Board of Land and Natural Resources and its chairman, Mike Wilson, must bear ultimate responsibility for ensuring that DOBOR comes back into the fold of respectability. To be sure, the board has made some effort in this regard. In July, for example, the Land Board voted to require a full explanation, within 60 days, from DOBOR of its management of accounts receivable. The 60 days have come and gone, and nearly 60 more have been added to them – yet DOBOR still has not complied with the board’s order.
All that has happened is the departure of Larry Cobb, who engineered the Ma`alaea lease for the state. Before the cheers go up, we would add that Cobb has not gone far. His new post is in the harbor property management division at that paragon of fiscal restraint and circumspection, the state Department of Transportation.
Volume 7, Number 5 November 1996
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