The first word in the agency’s name — the Public Land Development Corp. — ought to mean something, at the very least that its officials are listening to the public whose land is at issue.
That public spoke out again, and even more loudly at Tuesday’s round of hearings, held to gather comments on the PLDC’s draft of its administrative rules. Some of the testimony dealt with the proposed rules themselves — with more than one observation that the current draft is even worse than the last one.
But the larger message was that the problems go beyond any rulemaking; instead, they demand at the very least a major revision of the entire PLDC statute in the next Legislature.
For that reason, the PLDC should not act on its proposed rules, a decision that had been scheduled for later this month.
First, further hearings should be scheduled on the neighbor islands — many of the potential projects of PLDC could involve underutilized public land on those islands — to give residents there a voice on the rules and on the agency itself.
But any vote should be deferred until after state lawmakers take up legislation to make needed changes to Act 55, a law that passed in 2011 with insufficient public debate and scrutiny.
The concept of the PLDC itself seems to be a good one. The state budget is underfunded for essential improvements to state facilities and lands, such as small boat harbors and park land.
The corporation is intended to make partnerships with private companies more workable, leveraging private investment to help get the work done and enable taxpayers greater use of public assets.
However, that public grew rightly leery of the degree to which public oversight was being winnowed, with broad exemptions from land-use and zoning reviews enabled in the law.
The initial version of the rules already included insufficient provisions for public access to documents and various other shortcomings, and some proposals for revisions were made.
Now not only were suggestions ignored, said testifiers at the hearing, some of the better sections of the rules were deleted. Among those making that point this week was newly elected state Sen. Laura Thielen. One example she cited was the clipping of language requiring PLDC projects to be consistent with development and community plans where that was practical.
"These rule amendments are very clearly in the wrong direction," she said.
Anthony Aalto, chairman of the Oahu Group in the Sierra Club, added that the PLDC board’s action to date has simply rubbed salt in the wound. "They could have done something to calm people’s fears," he said. "But they didn’t even stand pat, they went in the other direction."
Those are all cogent criticisms of this agency, part of the larger conversation about the PLDC that went on through various campaigns for public office in the just-completed election cycle. Thielen said that the Senate, at least, has committed to hearing bills that propose repealing the law or, alternately, making major fixes to ensure greater public involvement in the process.
Until that happens, adoption of rules is simply premature. First things need to come first, and the No. 1 job on the list of state lawmakers would be to be certain that any agency with "public land" in its name is in good standing with the landlords.
