Head of OHA looks to
By Pat Omandam
change team negotiating
ceded lands
Star-BulletinThe Office of Hawaiian Affairs will ask to extend its talks with the state over past-due revenues from ceded lands, in part because it is changing its negotiation team.
The announcement yesterday by OHA Chairwoman Rowena Akana came just four days after a new six-member OHA majority this week placed Akana in the top seat.
She is OHA's third chairperson in the past 19 months.
Akana yesterday outlined some key issues for the agency next year. More immediate, however, were her plans to recommend a new team of negotiators for approval by the OHA board, a change that likely will include trustee Clayton Hee and herself.
In late July, Akana unsuccessfully argued for Hee as a negotiator to represent OHA, while trustee Moses Keale also wanted Akana. But the two lost out to then-chairwoman A. Frenchy DeSoto, trustee Haunani Apoliona and former interim trustee Herbert Campos.
Apoliona yesterday said a majority vote of five trustees will be needed for whomever Akana recommends to replace the current team, at the bargaining table with state officials since September.
Sam Callejo, the governor's chief of staff and point man for the state in the ceded-land negotiations, could not be reached yesterday to comment on the proposed changes.
Both sides are working under a Dec. 1 deadline set by the Hawaii Supreme Court to resolve the issue of OHA entitlements to revenues from certain uses of ceded land. The Hawaii justices last April heard oral arguments in the case, but indicated they wanted OHA and the state to reach an out-of-court settlement.
Akana said OHA will take Gov. Ben Cayetano up on his vision plan to settle in his new term the issue of ceded lands and their relation to Hawaiian entitlements.
Meanwhile, Akana said the loss this past election of three state senators of Hawaiian ancestry -- Sens. Malama Solomon, Lehua Fernandes Salling and James Aki -- as well as new House leadership will make it tougher to stop legislation that would again cap ceded-land revenue payments to OHA, as was done two years ago when OHA's payments were frozen at $15.1 million a year.
She believes trustee Mililani Trask -- the front-runner to head the agency's Legislative and Governmental Affairs Committee -- will serve as a good representative for OHA during the session. Trask, governor of Ka Lahui Hawaii, has been a staunch advocate on Hawaiian issues at the Legislature.
"I expect that she will be professional in representing this agency and people who elected her to serve, that she will be there serving OHA and the beneficiaries and the better good of those beneficiaries," Akana said.
The board is scheduled to meet Tuesday to decide committee assignments.
January '97 Ceded Lands Ruling
