I applaud and support Gov. Josh Green’s commitment to appoint women and Native Hawaiians for important Cabinet positions.
However, as someone who for 40 years has raised public awareness of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ shortcomings, I do not believe gender or race should be the determining criteria for the next leader of the state’s most important department for protecting conservation lands and implementing land use policy. The recent nomination of Dawn Chang as DLNR’s chairperson may be a nod to Green’s commitment to diversity, but it also raises deep concerns in our Hawaiian and environmental communities.
The Department of Land and Natural Resources plays vital roles in identifying and managing state-owned lands, including ceded lands; protection of Hawaiian burials and other cultural and archaeological resources; shielding sensitive conservation lands from development; regulation of fishing; and the management of coastal lands and local harbors. And yet, for decades DLNR has been plagued with weak leadership, crippled by understaffing, even fractious fiefdoms within its offices and divisions. All are problems contributing to the agency’s long standing reputation for ineffectiveness and even malfeasance.
Gov. Green, please do not make the same mistake that Gov. David Ige did in 2015, when he nominated developer Carlton Ching to lead DLNR. You saw with your own eyes how that attempt crashed and burned in the state Senate.
I and many others were surprised and deeply disappointed with Green’s nomination of Chang for DLNR chairperson. Her consulting firm Kuiwalu was hired by developers and state and federal agencies to work in communities to help generate support for controversial — sometimes dubious — economic projects, including the divisive Thirty Meter Telescope proposal on the Big Island.
We all saw firsthand how the world supported the Ala Hulu Kupuna Blockade, which successfully kept construction vehicles from going up the mountain. It would be a shame for Green to lose the widespread community appreciation garnered from his supportive visit to those dedicated kia‘i. Key leaders of these mountain protectors were revered cultural practitioners, 80-year-old kupuna, University of Hawaii department heads and faculty, graduates from the Hawaiian immersion school system and students educated in our island charter schools.
Please do not dash the hopes of these and other communities who greatly rely on a functioning DLNR. It must execute its mandate and muster the courage to stand against development pressures that would undermine that mission.
Dawn Chang’s reputation also suffered when court filings over burials at Kawaiaha‘o Church showed that she had helped the church avoid a more thorough archaeological review by DLNR’s State Historic Preservation Division.
“The result of her advice was protracted litigation and the disturbance of hundreds of burials,” said David Kimo Frankel, former Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. attorney, in an email. “We don’t need a fox guarding the hen house.”
We need a reformer for the DLNR chairperson and an advocate for resources protection, not further resources exploitation. I urge the governor to withdraw Dawn Chang’s name and instead, nominate a strong, pono leader with proven integrity who will truly carry out DLNR’s mandate and begin its long-overdue reform.
Nelson Ho, a longtime Sierra Club leader, is a former deputy director of the Hawaii County Department of Environmental Management and served on the board of directors for the Conservation Council for Hawaii.
