By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
"I'm numb already," says Alika Winchester at his
Waimanalo home, in reaction to the new wait
for his homestead claim.
THE BIG WAIT
Home Lands claims, even settled ones,
By Pat Omandam
are on the back burner again
Star-BulletinA decade ago, Alika Winchester watched Hawaiian Home Lands and city Public Works officials fumble with blueprints as they tried to find the sewer pipe to link his Waimanalo homestead to the city sewer system. Still without a sewer line during the New Year's Eve storm of 1987, Winchester watched helplessly as his cesspool backed up, causing thousands of dollars in damage to his home. That year, the city began fining him $50 a month for not being hooked up to the city sewer system.
Fed up, Winchester in 1991 filed a claim with the Hawaiian Homes Trust Individual Claims Review Panel. Last September, the panel found that Hawaiian Homes erred and awarded him $7,392, part of $6.8 million in damages from 165 cases that the panel sought from the state Legislature.
Lawmakers, however, sent the panel, its staff and claimants in nearly 4,000 cases into turmoil this spring when they decided not only to withhold payment on completed claims but also to create a working group to discuss a new formula and criteria for handling claims -- both completed and pending.
That action -- which could negate years of panel work -- has prompted the panel to stop reviewing claims until the working group reports to Gov. Ben Cayetano on Oct. 15.
For those whose claims have been completed, the wait continues.
"I'm numb already," Winchester said.
Elizabeth P.K. Galindo, still waiting after 34 years for a homestead, said Hawaiians are being wronged again.
"They just disappoint us because we were asking for so little, just to be reimbursed on the mistakes and errors, and now they want to put us on hold," Galindo said.
Panel Chairman Peter L. Trask, a former per diem judge and attorney with 20 years of experience, said he cannot understand how lawmakers could create the panel in 1991, charge it with hearing claims against Hawaiian Homes, and then decide this year to review what kinds of claims should be heard and who would qualify for them.
This short-term thinking, Trask said, may force the panel to disqualify cases completed or pending. Such action adds to Hawaiians' mistrust of state government and its commitment to help native people, he said.
"We may have in the last two years strived to give these people confidence in the system, gone out there to their doorsteps, to their communities, and told them all of this, and then we come back and we show them just how inept we are because we really aren't working alone," Trask said.
"We have someone else looking over our shoulders, and they changed the rules on us."
The Legislature created the panel to address breach of trust claims against the state involving the Hawaiian Home Lands trust from Aug. 21, 1959, to June 30, 1988.
The panel received 4,327 claims between February 1993 and Aug. 31, 1995, when it stopped accepting cases. Of the 3,931 cases accepted for investigation last December, 610 were completed, with the panel deciding in favor of homesteaders in 165 cases, awarding them $6.8 million for liability, damages and corrective action.
Review of the remaining 3,500 claims is estimated to result in awards of $100 million to $130 million, far more than lawmakers had expected when they created the panel.
State Rep. Ed Case (D, Manoa) said the working group must consider legislative history in formulating new claims criteria for the panel, which must reapply it to all claims and report to the 1999 legislature with its findings.
Case said legislators did not intend for the 1991 law to cover claims by people for waiting too long on the homestead list, but only individual claims for alleged wrongdoing by individual Hawaiian Home employees against individual beneficiaries.
"Many of the claims that have been submitted to the panel will probably not be considered to be valid," Case warned. "Then those people will have to make a determination whether to sue the state or not in court."
Lawmakers also had concerns about the amount of the awards, whether interest must be paid, the deadline for filing claims and what damages were covered. And there's dispute whether the $600 million paid to Hawaiian Homes in 1995 already covered such claims.
Kinau Boyd Kamalii, a former state legislator and Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee who served on a federal-state task force years ago to resolve Hawaiian Homes issues, said that what the state and lawmakers have done with the claimants and panel is a disgrace and insult.
"You can't believe them anymore," Kamalii said.
The working group, consisting of Trask, Hawaiian Homes Chairman Kali Watson, Attorney General Margery Bronster and Budget Director Earl Anzai, met for the first time on July 31, with Watson named chairman.
Four more meetings are scheduled before Oct. 15.
Melissa W.L. Seu, staff attorney for the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. who represents several claimants, said the group's composition is unjust because it includes the Hawaiian Homes department. Seu likened it to having her decided the outcome of a grievance filed against her. "It's real obvious to me," she said.
Attorney Hayden Aluli, who represents another 60 claimants, said lawmakers have reneged on their promise to address fairly breaches of trust of Hawaiian beneficiaries.
"Most of my clientele are aged people," Aluli said. "They are not the type that's going to carry up a banner. I think they've really lost a lot of hope and trust in our system."
Jobie Yamaguchi, Hawaiian Homes deputy director, said Watson -- who is on the mainland -- is approaching the working group with good faith.
"I know that it's a very difficult issue for the department, and what we're trying to achieve is resolution of these issues with the beneficiaries," Yamaguchi said.
"Because when it's all said and done, and the working group and the panel all goes away, the department and the beneficiaries are going to be left behind. So it's in their best interest to try to resolve this in a fair manner."
Misplaced forms among
By Pat Omandam
breach-of-trust awards
Star-BulletinElizabeth P.K. Galindo applied for an Oahu residential homestead with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands in 1963, and a check in 1970 showed her still on the waiting list. But when she checked again in 1985, the department told her they had no record of her application, saying it had probably been lost or destroyed by fire.
Frustrated, Galindo applied again for a homestead, but her new application didn't reflect her original application date of 1963. She still has not received a homestead.
The Hawaiian Homes Trust Individual Claims Review Panel last December awarded Galindo $130,543 in damages, one of 165 claims worth $6.8 million that the panel recommended in its 1997 report to the governor and Legislature.
Other awards recommended by the panel include:
$19,343.33 to Joanna M. Ramos, who in April 1985 applied for a Molokai residential homestead. In September 1995, the department awarded Ramos an unimproved lot in Kalamaula and gave her three years to build a house there. But because the house and lot had to conform to Maui County building codes, she couldn't use her homestead due to the lack of infrastructure and improvements.
On Sept. 13, 1996, the panel found the department committed a breach of trust by failing to provide Ramos with a developed homestead.
On Nov. 1, 1995, the panel found a breach of trust for failing to provide a fully developed agricultural lot by Dec. 31, 1985.
In 1980, at the urging of her father, she filed a second residential homestead application but has not yet received a homestead.
On July 31, 1996, the panel found a breach of trust for misplacing the 1975 application.
