More than 100 concerned citizens have asked Gov. David Ige to reject a list of nominees sent to him by the City Council for filling two board seats on a state agency regulating development in Kakaako, following an unusual selection process last week.

The group delivered a letter to Ige on Tuesday requesting that he return the list of candidates for the Hawaii Community Development Authority board to the Council’s Zoning and Housing Committee.

The group acted after incumbent board member Steve Scott, owner of slipper maker Scott Hawaii, was not included on the list.

Scott has challenged developers on issues at HCDA, and the three people nominated to take his place have ties to developers.

Zoning and Housing Committee Chairwoman Kymberly Pine said Scott shouldn’t be recommended for consideration by Ige because he was nominated by only one Council member.

Additionally, Pine asked that Diane Georgene Fujio, founder of the Master Sha Tao Healing Center, be added to the list of nominees, and the City Council approved Fujio without any discussion at a March 22 meeting.

The letter to Ige said the Council’s nomination process was flawed, arbitrary and ad hoc, and that it lacked public transparency.

“We are disappointed that the Council failed to take seriously its responsibility to receive and recommend nominees,” said the letter, signed by 114 people, including HCDA board Chairman John Whalen, former HCDA board member Dexter Okada and Children’s Discovery Center founder Loretta Yajima.

Other organizations endorsing the letter were Hawaii’s Thousand Friends, Kakaako United, Surfrider Foundation, Friends of Kewalos and Kakaako Makai Community Planning Advisory Council.

Pine could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

As chairwoman of the Zoning and Housing Committee, Pine was in charge of collecting nominations for the two available HCDA board seats. The terms of Scott and fellow board member Jason Okuhama expire June 30, but they can be nominated for another term, as Okuhama was.

Of the two seats, one is reserved for a Kakaako resident, and the other is for a Kakaako business owner. Scott’s slipper business is based in Kakaako, and Okuhama is a Kakaako resident.

Pine said during the March 22 City Council meeting that as of the prior week there were only two nominees for the resident seat — Okuhama and Jonathan L.W. Ching — when three were needed. And there were four nominees for the business seat: Scott, Jay Kadowaki, Phillip Hasha and Nani Medeiros. Hasha also lives in Kakaako and could serve as a resident representative.

At the meeting, Pine said she added Fujio to the resident seat list and removed Scott from the business seat list. Pine said she dropped Scott’s name because he was nominated fewer times by Council members, some of whom offered nominees already nominated by another Council member.

But some Council members said they didn’t know that duplicate nominations mattered, and that if they had they could have sought some for Scott, who was first appointed to HCDA’s board by Ige.

Pine got five other Council members — Chairman Ron Menor, Ikaika Anderson, Brandon Elefante, Trevor Ozawa and Joey Manahan — to accept her proposal for the list. Ann Kobayashi, Ernest Martin and Carol Fukunaga objected, though Kobayashi, who nominated Scott, voted with reservations to adopt the final resolution sent to Ige.

Kadowaki is the head of general contracting firm J. Kadowaki Inc. Hasha heads commercial real estate development firm The Redmont Group LLC. Medeiros is executive director of HomeAid Hawaii, a nonprofit that assists with building or renovating facilities to help the homeless. It is guided by a board of directors that includes representatives from Kakaako developers Howard Hughes Corp., Stanford Carr, Castle &Cooke and Alexander &Baldwin.