Land truly does equal power in Hawaii, with acreage bringing money and influence. Factor in the complicated political history of the Hawaiian kingdom’s overthrow, which continues into land-revenue disputes today, and it’s a complex equation that requires ultra-
careful decisionmaking.
That’s why the controversial House Bill 499, just passed by the state Legislature, should be paused and put on Gov. David Ige’s intent-to-veto list for closer review.
The bill would give the state Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) the power to extend public-land leases — now capped at 65 years — for another 40 years without competition if tenants make major property improvements. Such upgrades must be at least 30% of what existing facilities on the site are worth, and the tenant would agree to updated rent based on land value.
Statewide, that would include public-land leases entered into by businesses and government entities — the University of Hawaii is exempted — at airports, harbors, industrial parks and other sites.
The votes on HB 499 were not unanimous: 36-15 in the state House and 16-9 in the Senate, reflecting dissension on this issue — for good reasons.
Allowing any tenant to lock in use of public lands for 100 years is dubious public policy, which could enable less-than-rigorous oversight of tenants’ responsibilities. And, as the Star-Advertiser’s Andrew Gomes reported in a May 5 article, such extension up to 100 years without competition runs counter to long-held state policy to provide equal opportunity for public-land use via competitive auctions to fetch higher rent revenue.
Bill opponents are right in noting that “excessively long” leases of up to a century without public bidding could preclude benefits from future real estate market conditions, shortchange valid reassessment of site management, and allow tenants to put off for more years improvements that were conditions of land use.
The state Land Department, in written testimony backing HB 499, said it “believes that retaining long-term lessees in good standing is in the best interests of the state.”
Good standing comes with diligent, mindful stewardship of public lands. For the state, not having to revisit land leases for additional decades might well mean expediency and simpler management, and be more lessee-
friendly — but it also raises risks of laxer oversight on tenants not living up to lease conditions, which occurs even under current 65-year leases.
The Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) on Hawaii island, for example, has been the subject of legal action that has revealed decades of weak state oversight of land-use conditions, which in turn has allowed the military to fall short of environmental obligations there. In fact, some opponents of HB 499 fear that the state BLNR could extend the Army lease for PTA’s 23,000 acres, which is set to expire in 2029.
And then there are the weighty concerns that HB 499 is perpetuating the state’s dismal handling of lands against the Native Hawaiian interest — a keep-away of acreage that will never enable redress of past wrongs
despite legal and legislative mandates.
“Allowing these lands to be leased for a century at a time would effectively prevent Hawaiian claims from ever being resolved because the people who lease ‘ceded’ lands will fight to keep extending their leases,” testified attorney Alan Murakami, recently retired from the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., writing as a private citizen. “It is offensive to current Hawaiian leaders who have reserved their claims.”
By locking in century-long land leases for status-quo uses, HB 499 would preclude timely opportunities for
reassessments in the public interest, whether they be based on real-estate market or environmental conditions. Further, for Native Hawaiians, it brings to mind that expression of “possession being nine-tenths of the law” — in their case, ownership being difficult to attain if one does not have possession. That’s the deepening
morass Native Hawaiians face — unjustly so — should
HB 499 and 100-year public land leases become law.
