Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 12, Number 9, 1 September 1995 — The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is broken --let's fix it [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is broken --let's fix it

by Kowena Akana, Trustee-at-large "Like a boil that never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human eonscience and the air ofnational opinion before it ean be cured" Dr. Martin Luther King. Letterfrom Birmingham Jail

Nearly three decades later, the strength and truth of Dr! King's words eoniinue to ring true. In 1993, state auditor Marion Higa wrote a scathing report about how the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was managed. Office of Hawaiian Affairs' management controls are inadequate. Standing committees are dysfunctional. Trust funds are mislabeled. The office's Master Plan and Functional Plan have not

been updated. Policy and Procedure Manuals are incomplete and not complied in a useful way. Internal communications are poor. Apart from all that, the state auditor seemed to think the Board of Trustees needs training in how to be Trustees! Although formed as an entitlement trust, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs is now run more like the Legislature. The gas tank is full, but no one has a road map! As in the Legislature, the subject matter committee structure of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs allows too mueh opportunity for action items to get buried in eommittee. never to be heard from again. In a recent example of this dysfunctional committee system,

Chairman Hee recently appointed an "Ad Hoe Committee to Evaluate the Administrator." In the beginning, the eommitte chaired by Trustee Abraham Aiona seemcd capable of making a tough but fair assessment. However, Trustee Samuel Kealoha called for a vote for the matter to be deliberated upon further by the Budget, Finance and Policy Committee, also chaired by Trustee Aiona.

Meanwhile, the Administrator desperately tries to justify his work to date. After one and one half years, there are still no changes in the Functional Plans and the Operating Manuals, or in any of the other areas criticized by the state auditor. Another practice found highly unsavory by the state auditor continues apaee - the payment of private contractors without Boardapproved contracts by means of purchase orders. Our own auditor even suggested we change this immediately! Office of Hawaiian Affairs funds have been used to advertise the "great" things that we've been doing, like: 1) A $20 million loan program for Hawaiian Homeland beneficiaries, whieh has been so prob!ematic that in one and one half years only 21 people have been able to access the funds, Ieaving a remaining balance of $19,400,109. That balance could be applied to other housing alternatives. 2) The Royal Kunia residential development deal, announced with such fanfare just before election time, whieh only made available seven homes. 3) The $10 million scholarship fund, whieh has yet to award a single scholarship, even though it was first announced in 1992. Over the past several years, I have written many articles calling attention to the disheartening internal problems of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Unfortunately, not mueh has changed in the five years that I've been here. Under the present Ieadership, the sore spoken of by Dr. King has only gotten bigger, spreading infection to other areas. How do we deal with it? lhey must be brought out into the light, so that they ean be exposed and start to heal. An excellent plaee to begin would be with taking a hard look at this Administration and the leadership of the Board. Instead of going on and on about the fabulous shell game played in these offices, it would be better to say that David Copperfield could learn mueh from this leadership!