At its meeting of April 26, the Board of Land and Natural Resources was considering proposed fines against landowners at Marconi Point who were alleged to have violated state laws relating to the Conservation District and protected species. Dozens of concerned members of the public had shown up to testify, but Land Board chair Dawn Chang would not let them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deputy Attorney General Danica Swenson had advised the board that following the request for a contested case by one of the alleged violators, public testimony could proceed only with the explicit consent of the party who would be seeking the contested case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With at least one of the parties who indicated they would be asking for a contested case objecting to public testimony, Chang refused to allow any public testimony on the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Environment Hawai\u02bbi <\/em>asked the state Office of Information Practices (OIP) for an opinion on the Land Board\u2019s shut-down of public testimony on an item that had been publicly noticed on the board\u2019s agenda. We noted that this action \u201cis contrary to what is required under Chapter 92, specifically, Section 92-3\u2026 \u2018The boards shall afford all interested persons an opportunity to submit data, views, or arguments, in writing, on any agenda item. The boards shall also afford all interested persons an opportunity to present oral testimony on any agenda item.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The OIP\u2019s Robert Shimizu forwarded our letter to Chang on June 3. \u201cBLNR\u2019s response to this appeal is BLNR\u2019s opportunity to provide justification for BLNR\u2019s actions or any additional information that BLNR would like OIP to consider,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chang responded to the OIP on July 17. In defending the board\u2019s actions on April 26, she invoked the Supreme Court case Mauna Kea Anaina Hou. <\/em>That case involved the Land Board taking an action \u2013 issuing a Conservation District permit \u2013 and only holding a contested case hearing on the matter after<\/em> the permit had been issued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The situations are hardly analogous, which Chang seems to acknowledge<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlthough that case involved the board\u2019s approval of a permit despite pending requests for a contested case on the permit application, the discussion and analysis of the court are instructive in this situation. The court made it clear that the board must not only be impartial and fair, but also appear so,\u201d Chang wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGiven the logic and rationale of the Mauna Kea Anaina Hou<\/em> case, a cautious approach is warranted, weighing the due process considerations (tending against continuing with public testimony) with the policy considerations of the sunshine law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Environment Hawai\u02bbi<\/em> is pursuing its appeal with the OIP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Patricia Tummons<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At its meeting of April 26, the Board of Land and Natural Resources was considering proposed fines against landowners at Marconi Point who were alleged to have violated state laws relating to the Conservation District and protected species. Dozens of … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[527,13],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-16090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-august-2024","category-board-talk","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090","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=16090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}