Growing our state government is almost always a dubious idea, especially when it’s a plan to create an authority over an existing division — in this case, airports. Such a proposal raises even more questions when the new authority would have sole power over airport and harbor lands.
Senate Bill 3072 would establish an airport authority governed by a five-member board that would oversee all airport operations, including land dispositions.
It’s one of several Department of Transportation (DOT)-related bills moving through the state Legislature that would remove any semblance of checks and balances regarding airport and harbor land use.
SB 3072 and other House bills would eliminate a much-needed layer of public review over DOT land-use dispositions by the state Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR), which posts the agenda items and allows for public input before a vote is taken.
Approval or denial of DOT’s long-term leases, other land disposition agreements and month-to-month revocable permits should remain under the purview of BLNR, which has an established protocol.
In its current version, SB 3072 does not specify how the airport authority board’s land disposition process would work, and that should be provided in detail.
Further, requirements regarding the level of public input and environmental review are vague, and that’s concerning. The board would, however, fall under the state’s Sunshine Law, which promotes open meetings, according to the state Office of Information Practices.
Still, DOT’s track record does not instill confidence that creation of an airport authority would improve operations, including the handling of land transactions.
The department, for instance, has struggled to expend its federal funding for highways — and to some extent its airports — for repairs, maintenance and new construction, risking the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.
While the state would argue that the DOT has issued its own
revocable permits since 1993 when BLNR delegated that authority to the agency, a recent attorney general opinion concluded that the delegation was improper. But rather than comply with the law as written, Gov. David Ige’s administration is seeking to change it.
Under Ige administration-proposed HB 2407, DOT would have sole authority over negotiated agreements, including long-term leases, for airport and harbor lands. House Bill 2408 would remove BLNR from the approval process for revocable permits.
Both measures overwhelmingly passed the House, but appear doomed in the Senate where Transportation and Energy Committee Chairwoman Lorraine Inouye has no plans to schedule a hearing.
Inouye’s instincts are right: “The transparency would be worse — there wouldn’t be any.”
If both House bills die, it would rightly end DOT’s decades-long practice of issuing revocable permits unchecked, which would improve transparency.
SB 3072, however, is scheduled to be heard by the House Finance Committee at 11 a.m. Friday. DOT argues it would be better able to address historical, cultural and environmental concerns through an airport authority, yet it fails to specify how.
Just last month, Native Hawaiian salt makers were able to voice their opposition to a proposal that would have allowed a helicopter operation at tiny Port Allen Airport on Kauai to increase the state land it leases there by a third. The salt makers, who contend the expansion would negatively affect salt ponds in the area, urged BLNR to reject the lease and the proposal was removed from BLNR’s Feb. 26 agenda.
The DOT’s outright dismissal of the salt makers’ concerns gives little assurance that it would be inclined to listen to public sentiment.
The public’s views should not be inconsequential, and lawmakers will need to decide whether important land decisions should be left in the hands of an ill-defined entity within the DOT.
So far, the department has not made its case.
