Companion bills in the Legislature that would put $600 million in general revenues into a special Department of Hawaiian Home Lands fund to help Native Hawaiian beneficiaries acquire homes are scheduled for hearings today.
Senate Bill 3359 has a hearing in the Ways and Means Committee at 10:10 a.m., while House Bill 2511 is scheduled to be heard by the Finance Committee in a 2:30 p.m.
Both hearings are available live online via YouTube.
The House bill was introduced by Speaker Scott Saiki, and the Senate bill was introduced by Oahu Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, the Ways and Means vice chairman. The measures are supported by all Big Island legislators.
Both bills point out that more than 28,700 applicants statewide remain on the waiting list for residential, agricultural or pastoral leases.
The measures also note the challenges faced by the DHHL in placing beneficiaries on 203,500 acres of trust land.
Those challenges include: the lack of availability of beneficiary-preferred land, which is residential property on Oahu that represents only 3% of the department’s total lands; the cost of preparing lands for homesteading leases by providing adequate roads, water, sewer drainage, electricity and other infrastructure; and the inability of many beneficiaries to obtain mortgages to build homes on the land.
The bills also call for DHHL to submit an annual report to the Legislature no later than 20 days prior to the regular session. The report is to include expenditures from the special fund in the previous year and the number of beneficiaries removed from the waitlist by the special fund.
The Senate bill has drawn 104 pages of written testimony, while the House bill has 29 pages of written testimony — with testifiers overwhelmingly in support of the measure.
Testifiers in support include DHHL, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the State Council on Developmental Disabilities, Hawaii County Councilman Holeka Inaba of North Kona, Hawaii Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development, Hawaii Habitat for Humanity Association, League of Women Voters of Hawaii, Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, Catholic Charities Hawaii, Ko‘olauloa Hawaiian Civic Club, and numerous individuals identifying themselves as Native Hawaiians, DHHL homesteaders or wait-listers.
“Having the money held in trust safeguards the money for the purposes of the trust,” wrote Piilani Kaopuiki of the League of Women Voters of Hawaii. “An independent trustee … should be appointed to administer the trust. The capable trustee must be free of entanglements subject to conflict-of-interest concerns. The trustee should be able to report funds management directly to the Legislature in some fashion.”
“We all would like to think that by throwing $600 million at DHHL, we could make a significant dent in the production of Hawaiian homestead lands and getting people off the decades-long wait list into Hawaiian homesteads,” the Tax Foundation of Hawaii testified in apparent opposition, although its testimony wasn’t explicitly labeled as such. “But there are apparently issues with getting DHHL to spend the money it now has. … To make a dent in the problem, we really need to understand why DHHL can’t spend the money it now has. If we can’t fix that problem, giving them a slug of additional funds can’t be expected to solve much.”
Either bill, if passed into law in its current form, would take effect on July 1.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.