Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 10, 1 October 1993 — "I said what I meant, and I meant what I said." [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

"I said what I meant, and I meant what I said."

by Rowena Akana Trustee-at-large

Last month I said OHA never forged a cohesive spending plan for its reparation payments. The other OHA trustees and administration wrote an open letter that took exception to my

public discourse on this issue. The open letter insists that "the functional plan of this office operationalizes the Master Plan" and that "the priorities identified in the Master Plan guide our decisions on use of trust funds." If the plans guide decision-mak-ing, the decision makers are not following the guidelines. Case in point: Trustee Moanike'ala Akaka's eolumn (Ka Wai Ola O OHA, Sept. 1993, page 14) expresses, among other more pleasant news, "a huge disappointment that since OHA's inception little attention has been devoted to [direct funding for health and human services.]" Objective 1.1 of the Health Functional Plan is the reduction of suffering of native Hawaiians from major health problems; "[The] Achievement of this objective is top priority, [because] it deals with ... life and

death," the plan states. To fund this objective, she

asked the board to appropriate $600,000 for programs in her Health and Human Services committee. The board redirected the money to Alu Like — another agency — for its administrative costs. The board ignored the functional plan — as

it often does. In the Ka Wai Ola O OHA November 1992 issue Trustee Moses Keale's eolumn presented the most thorough indictment of the functional plan to date. The board authorized the administration to formulate the plan, called "I Luna A'e," and Trustee Keale blasted the "experiment" as a "failure." "Looking at the picture as a whole, I find that while we have spent large sums of monies, expended an enormous amount of staff time, and committed a great deal of office resources to the efforts of the I Luna A'e program, the success ratio is dismal. "It is time for us to take a hard look at whether our resources are being doctored in an efficient manner. The bottom line is whether you are receiving the benefits that we have mandated the office to deliver. ... Our focus

should now turn toward building the best 'delivery of service program' that we ean now muster. ... Although this may require unpleasant decisions, that is the nature of the position of leadership to whieh eaeh of us is elected!" That has been my message, but I am berated for it. I also am berated for not having an alternative. My alternative is, and always has been this: run OHA more like a trust, less like a government (see my eolumn in the February 1993 Ka Wai Ola O

OHA, for one example.) Here's a brief explanation of how the board ean do this: 1. Make a list of priorities. Decide what's most important to Hawaiians (health care, housing, education, etc.). If heahh is our top priority, plan to fund heahh programs with the largest specific amount possible. Simple, if you follow the plan. 2. Plan for the long haul. We must: (a) commission a study to develop a long-range (not shortor medium-range) eeonomie

development plan; (b) write it into our bylaws; and (e) employ the principal and interest accordingly. 3. Don't take things personally. The trustees and administrators become defensive when I attack the processes by whieh they operate. I am not attacking them personally, but they do not make the distinction between themselves and the process. This is what happens in government. If we were the trust we should be, none of this would happen.