Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 34, Number 2, 1 February 2017 — Setting the Record Straight [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Setting the Record Straight

would like to start by sending a BIG mahalo to Hawley Iona, our former Chief Financial Officer. She has left our organization to begin a new

chapter īn her career. f am eonfident she will remain committed to serving our lāhui and I wish her the best. She served our organization well, often in the face of controversy and adversity, she remained steadfast in her kuleana and always did a thorough job managing her staff and the hnancials for OHA. This leads me to a very important discussion. With the controversy surrounding the recent re-organization of the board of trustees, there has been significant media coverage that has

picked up on some of the current conflicts we face internally. Mueh of that controversy has been based on severe mischaracterizations of our budgets and how money is both generated and expended. I will try my best to simplify a very complex topic in order to provide some clarity and to correct some of the purposeful mischaracterizations being made. I want to be clear, there is always room to improve andl support increasedtransparency and accountability for the board and the administration in order to help us move forward. However, in order to do that, we must be steadfast in doing our homework and sticking to the facts. Chair Akana recently stated in a news interview that OHA's budget has "ballooned" under the current CEO, whieh is false. Our core operations budget today is about the same as it was in 2012 when CEO Crabbe took on his position - approximately $36 million. What has "ballooned" is OHA's kuleana as an organization. Since that time we acquired two commercial properties with significant revenue generating potential - Kaka'ako Makai and Nā Lama Kukui. OHA's commercial properties budget, whieh is managed separately from our core operations, represents the only notable increase in OHA's budget since 2012.

Also, what is not made clear in Chair Akana's broad, sweeping statements is that our overall budget is broken into categories. The 2016 annual core

operations budget represents the monies used to pay 170 employees, this also covers our grants, it covers $3 million to the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, nearly $3 million for educational purposes including $1.5 million to support Hawaiian focused charter schools, $ 1 million for social services, and $1.5 million in heahh grants. The other parts of the overall budget include commercial property (Kaka'ako Makai and Nā Lama Kukui), Special Programs for whieh federal grants are man-

aged such as the Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund, and our Legacy Properties such as Wao Kele o Puna and Palauea Cultural Preserve. These additional budget categories fluctuate year-to-year based on revenues generated and grants received. The commercial property budget items include the revenue generated and funds expended to manage Kaka'ako and Nā Lama Kūkui. This represents a significant increase of nearly $7 million in our overall budget because we did not own these properties prior to 2012. It is an increase in assets, revenue, and kuleana. We are re-in-vesting most of the revenue back into these properties for planning and future development so they will serve as perennial sources of ineome for our trust. It is unfortunate that all the facts are not being shared, hopefully by the time this article runs, mueh of this ean be cleared up. I want to mahalo our staff that work hard every day to serve this organization. They have managed the workload well as OHA's role and kuleana has grown exponentially in the last five years. MAHALO! I also request that our community please remain engaged as we work through the current difficulties, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we will eome out of this stronger and prepared to tackle the next obstacles as a result of these struggles. ■

Dan Ahuna TrustEE, Kaua'i and Ni'ihau