Last month, the state Environmental Council lost two more members. The resignations brought to four the number of members quitting in disgust this year. On May 4, David Bylund, chairman of the council\u2019s annual report committee, submitted his resignation letter to Governor Lingle, describing the council as \u201ctoo politicized, undermined, and ineffective.\u201d One week later, Wade Lord informed the governor that he, too, was stepping down.<\/p>\n
\tEarlier this year, council chairman Robert King and member Christopher Steele resigned, citing the lack of support for the council\u2019s work by the administration of Governor Linda Lingle. (King\u2019s resignation was reported in the May issue of Environment Hawai`i<\/i>.)<\/p>\n
Bylund was chairman of the council\u2019s annual report committee. In 2007, the theme of the report was environmental justice, selected largely at the suggestion of the Legislature. \u201cI was dismayed and upset to discover that your office did not release the Annual Report because you did not agree with some of its contents,\u201d Bylund wrote Lingle. \u201cYour office did not inform the Council of your decision not to distribute the report.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tIn 2008, the council\u2019s annual report focused on the theme of food security and self-sufficiency. This time, the governor\u2019s office supported the theme, but when the time came to prepare and distribute the report, Bylund wrote, \u201cthe staff support in the Office of Environmental Quality Control had disappeared. This situation required our committee and OEQC Director Kathy Kealoha to try to take over their tasks. One of the requirements for the Environmental Council is to \u2018monitor the progress of state, county, and federal agencies in achieving the state\u2019s environmental goals and policies.\u2019 We were unable to gather agency information because of the lack of staff support.\u201d For the 2009 report, Bylund continued, \u201cit is clear that there continues to be no staff support and there are no funds for the production of the report.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLord mentioned in his list of grievances the lack of progress in amending council rules, the suppressed annual report, and insufficient staff support, among other things. Both he and Bylund echoed a complaint made by the council chairman Robert King in his resignation letter of April 7 concerning inadequate meeting facilities. King had objected to ever-smaller meeting rooms and video-conference facilities that were dysfunctional.<\/p>\n
\tThe video-conferencing was intended to reduce travel costs, Lord noted, and, \u201cwhile this seemed like a reasonable alternative, it has been wholly inadequate. The equipment consistently malfunctions and there is no technical support\u2026 In the several meetings I have attended via video-conferencing, we have yet to have a single meeting wherein the equipment worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tWrote Bylund, \u201cthe council was happy to embrace video-conferencing for our monthly meetings. However, the result is our being relegated to inadequate basement training rooms, too small for our council meetings, much less to welcome public participation. In addition, there has been no technical support in O`ahu and on the neighbor islands.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe council members \u201care good people, donating their valuable time and expertise to help make Hawai`i a better place,\u201d Lord wrote. \u201cThey do not, and I do not, deserve to be treated this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tBylund\u2019s parting words were more damning: \u201cThe only conclusion I can reach is that the [Department of Health] and your office find no value in the Environmental Council.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tSteele was the first council member to resign this year. In a phone interview, Steele said he had \u201cworked long and hard for years to have the opportunity to sit on the council.\u201d His resignation, he added, \u201cwas not an easy decision,\u201d but there was an \u201cabsolute lack of support. It felt like no one wanted anything to do with us. They treated us like a lost stepchild.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAt full strength, the Environmental Council has 15 members. According to a staff person, there were no new appointments this year and no members whose terms expire at the end of June. The council approves agency exemption lists (lists of actions that do not trigger preparation of an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement) and promulgates rules to implement the state environmental policy act, Chapter 343 of Hawai`i Revised Statutes.<\/p>\n
— Patricia Tummons<\/p>\n
Volume 19, Number 12 June 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last month, the state Environmental Council lost two more members. The resignations brought to four the number of members quitting in disgust this year. On May 4, David Bylund, chairman of the council’s annual report committee, submitted his resignation letter … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-june-2009"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}