Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 15, Number 4, 1 April 1998 — Privatization: Good deal or sell-out? [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Privatization: Good deal or sell-out?

GOVERNOR BEN Cayetano is ealling for privatization of the State Historic Preservation Division. His suggestion calls for firing staff anel reassigning their work to archaeologists hired by developers. What a sweet deal this is - for the developes and eonsultants. With the state out of the process, the state will save money, but it sells off its responsibility to monitor and prevent culturally and environmentally insensitive activities. Onee again the general public and the Hawaiian people lose out. Allowing developers to hand-pick and hire archaeologists is tantamount to saying that all developers are not only honest and honorable, but culturally sensitive to our 'āina. Does H-3 ring any alarm bells for you? Historically developers have brashed aside the history and culture of these islands. "Letting developers hire archaeologists to review their projects is like letting the Mafia poliee the Mafia," said Patrick Kirch of the University of California, Berkeley, in a recent Honolulu Advertiser

article. Giving this power to developers could lead to abuses that would allow high rise condos and shopping centers to be built on sacred refuges or burial grounds important to Hawai'i's history. This form of privatization has some serious drawbacks, but the greatest are the diminished quahty of preservation work in Hawai'i and more destraction for the sake of development. The ODDortunitv for the devel-

oper to skew a review in his favor is obvious; he is the employer of both the consultant doing the study, and the consultant reviewing it for adequacy. The state has previously shown its tendency to avoid its statutory responsibilities in the handling of the burials program within the Department of Land and Natural Resources. For the past two years OHA has funded two positions, including all benefits, for the burials program

although the statutes mandate program positions and the Iegislamre funds it. Why is OHA fiinding positions for whieh the state has responsibility? Perhaps it's another form of privatizing. Again, the state is passing the buck. There have been attempts to move this program to OHA permanently, but the program would lose its purpose unless the governor and legislamre worked to grant OHA enforcement powers.

In November, I cnticized the effort by the governor and DLNR to privatize small boat harbors. I pointed out that WestRec Marinas lobbied the governor and Miehael Wilson, hoping for a consulting agreement with DLNR to manage those harbors for the state. My eoncern then was what would happen to the loeal fishermen and the submerged lands in the harbor when boat harbors became privatized.

My eoneem is for the people of this state and the 'āina. Before the governor seriously considers privatizing the State Historic Preservation Division or the management of small boat harbors, more public input is needed. Over the last two years I have watched what appears to be a very sinister move by the administration and certain legislators to create commissions and divisions of the state government to divide and parcel out ceded land so as to remove them from the ceded land corpus. We only have to look at the bills being introduced into the legislature to see this. Upon statehood in 1959, the state constimtion named two beneficiaries of Hawaiian lands: Native Hawaiians and the general public. Therefore, the general public should be as concerned as the Hawaiian people that the state government does not breach its fiduciary responsibility as trastees of the public land trast. In the 1998 general elections we must tell these legislators they ean no longer mismanage our tax dollars and then cover their tracks with the use of ceded land revenues. ■

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