U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa said state lawmakers believed they had a “deal” with unnamed community members in 2010 that would clear the way for the Thirty Meter Telescope if the Legislature agreed to fund construction of the College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
During her last year as president of the state Senate, Hanabusa said, University of Hawaii officials told lawmakers they needed to appropriate money to build the College of Hawaiian Language at UH-Hilo because funding that project was “part of the deal for TMT.”
Hanabusa later elaborated through a staff member that then-University of Hawaii President M.R.C. Greenwood told her about the agreement.
Ka Haka Ula O Keelikolani College of Hawaiian Language cost $21 million, and opened at UH-Hilo in early 2014.
“I feel that when we funded that, that we did what was expected of us by whomever the community was that they were speaking to,” said Hanabusa, who is running for governor in 2018. She said she is unclear on who participated in the negotiations that linked the two projects.
“I didn’t make that deal,” she said. “That was what we were told by the UH at the time. So, whoever the UH made the deal with.”
The $1.4 billion TMT has been stalled for nearly three years by protests and litigation by Native Hawaiians and others who oppose having it on Mauna Kea, which some Hawaiians consider to be sacred land. Sponsors of the project have said that unless the telescope is cleared for construction by next spring, they may have to move TMT to the Canary Islands.
Gov. David Ige, who was also in the state Senate at the time, said he was never consulted about the agreement Hanabusa described.
“Obviously, if there was a deal, it was not expressed in any way that could be legally enforced,” Ige said. If Hanabusa approved such an agreement, “she failed to execute it in a way that could live beyond her presidency. I have not seen any documentation of that.”
Dan Meisenzahl, spokesman for the university, said he was unable to identify any member of the current UH administration who acknowledges being part of an agreement that linked construction of a building for the college with the TMT. Greenwood did not respond last week to an emailed request for comment.
Larry Kimura, associate professor of Hawaiian language and Hawaiian studies at the College of Hawaiian Language, said he never heard of any agreement that linked construction of a building for the Hawaiian language college to TMT.
“Not at all, not at all,” Kimura said. “This is all news to me, I never heard of this. That was not my understanding, and I don’t think it was the understanding of my colleagues.”
Kimura has also been involved in issues on Mauna Kea, and served as co-chairman of the UH Committee for a new Mauna Kea Management Master Plan from 1998 to 2000.
Kimura said he believes former Gov. Linda Lingle was the true champion of the Hawaiian language college construction project. Lingle toured the UH-Hilo campus and inspected the four sites where the growing college held its classes when it was scattered across the campus, he said.
Kealoha Pisciotta, one of the leaders of the protesters who oppose TMT, said she heard nothing about the agreement Hanabusa described.
“We had no idea about it, and if we did, we would have called it out as unethical,” Pisciotta said. “Why should Hawaiians be forced to have to choose between their culture and surviving in a modern world that requires money?”
“There is no deal. You either get the permit, or you don’t. If there’s a deal, there’s a problem,” she said.
