OHA Candidate Keli’i Akina: "Tribal recognition is a scheme for exploiting Native Hawaiians"
Nation Building? "Who benefits from this strategy?"
Mayor Caldwell announces homeless action plan
Controversial school superintendent gets $50,000 pay hike
Gun Control Group Points to Hawaii as Example
Law Prof: Interior Department Tribe Scheme 'On a Slippery Slope to Defeat'
SA: In a move that already is stirring controversy, the Obama administration is taking the first steps in a long process that could eventually lead to the federal government's recognition of a future Native Hawaiian governing entity.
But some are questioning whether the action is premature and whether the president has the authority to re-establish a government-to-government relationship without going through Congress, as backers of the so-called Akaka Bill unsuccessfully tried to do for more than a decade.
"I think he's on a rather slippery slope," said Gil Johnston, a Chicago law school professor and former Legal Aid attorney who used to practice in Hawaii, represented Native Hawaiians and has expertise in administrative rule-making, the process Obama is embarking on to consider the government-to-government issue. "If I were advising Obama, I would say, ‘You're going to face defeat.'"...
Some Native Hawaiians and others contend the Obama move is premature and rushed, given the short notice before the meeting start and the lingering questions about the nation-building process and the kingdom.
This will add "more mayhem, more chaos," said Kekuewa Kikiloi, assistant professor at the University of Hawaii's Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. "It's really coming at the wrong time."....
Keli‘i Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, called the administration's move "an unconstitutional end-run around the Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress."....
As Explained: Hawaiian Sovereignty by Fiat? Feds 'advance notice' not a serious proposal
read ... Federal Invasion
Law Prof: Feds Do Not Have Jurisdiction Over Hawaiian Sovereignty
HPR: Two potential steps — creating a government and seeking federal recognition — can happen at the same time, said Jessica Kershaw, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department....
Critics have said the path the federal government is pursuing is inappropriate because it appears the end goal is to incorrectly recognize Native Hawaiians as a Native American tribe....
Williamson Chang, a law professor at the University of Hawaii, believes the legal questions raised recently about whether the Kingdom of Hawaii still exists pushed the federal government into action.
"I consider Hawaii to be occupied or under a state of emergency," Chang said. "The one thing I'm sure of is the United States does not have jurisdiction."
A federal recognition that is similar to a tribal designation would be a step backward in the eyes of many Hawaiians, because the U.S. previously recognized the Hawaiian government as equal, not beneath, the U.S., Chang said.
"One solution could be complete independence, but I don't think the United States would stand for that," Chang said. "The Big Island could be spun off and become an independent nation, where Hawaiians could say they have a homeland."
read ... Spin off Big Island
Sovereignty Activists Reject Tribal Process
CB: Mililani Trask, a Hawaiian sovereignty activist and candidate for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs this year, said that there is too little notice before the hearings and suggested that local politicians will use Monday’s meeting at the State Capital to woo native voters.
Others said the federal process would counteract efforts to obtain sovereignty. Jon Osorio, a professor at the University of Hawaii who wants to restore the Hawaiian Kingdom, called the Interior Department’s plan “an attempt to continue to deny the lawful existence of our own government.”
“There is no need to create another government for kanaka maoli because one already exists,” he said.
read ... More Reaction
Abercrombie GEMS Plan a Trojan Horse to Slip Big Cable Past PUC
IM: DBEDT asserts that the cable will be required to handle the additional solar added to the grids but that the cable should be excluded from Phase 1 of the GEMS project. Once the GEMS Project has a foot in the door, then Phase 2 can be broached.
DBEDT’s web page has a 2014 presentation made by DBEDT Director Lim on the GEMS Program. The presentation refers to the inter-island cable.
“Energy Financing Structures Hawaii has created two securitization structures to enable low cost financing for energy infrastructure: Undersea Cable, GEMS [] Once the initial deployment is completed, GEMS has the potential to finance a wider set of clean energy infrastructure, including: Grid modernization and smart grid.”
DBEDT “supports an interisland transmission cable connecting Oahu and Maui grids. As the state’s Energy Resources Coordinator, DBEDT believes an Oahu-Maui grid tie is in the public interest. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS? [ ] Increased utilization of high-efficiency renewable energy development that can be operated with less or even no curtailment.”
Related: Calling all Cronies: Hawaii to Burn $150M on Subprime Energy Loan GEMS
read ... DBEDT Secrecy: Restricting Public Right-to-Know
Gay-Atheist Plan for Your Children Depends on Election Outcome
HM: He maintains that the program teaches students that homosexuality is on par with heterosexuality, adding, “It misrepresents the frequency of homosexual behavior, thereby inculcating our children with a new set of values that are not the same as their parents.”
Many civil rights advocates would call this progress. Conservatives like McDermott call it social engineering. “We’re educating these kids subliminally. (Homosexuality) is a statistical aberration using (Centers for Disease Control) numbers.”
“It’s a progressive, leftist social engineering package,” McDermott says of Pono Choices.
When McDermott introduced a measure last legislative session to make what he says were specific and succinct changes to Pono Choices, all seven Republicans in the House voted in favor of it. All the 44 Democrats voted it down.
It could prove interesting to see if people vote for or against Pono Choices-related candidates along these party lines or if people have moved onto other issues in who they next elect.
read ... Plan for Resurrection
Brower Abuses Allowance With Sledgehammer Purchase
CB: Most members of the Legislature utilize their allowance, some even max it out each year. Only one, Sen. Sam Slom, doesn’t touch it. By his accounting, he has saved taxpayers $118,037 since he was first elected in 1996.
The issue has become political this election season. Pat Saiki, chair of the Hawaii Republican Party, issued a statement Wednesday slamming certain lawmakers for misusing the fund.
She identified Rep. Tom Brower as among the worst offenders for buying a sledgehammer to destroy shopping carts being used by homeless people.
Brower did indeed buy the sledgehammer with his allowance, claiming the $37 expense as an office supply. He was reimbursed for the expense Nov. 15, but he submitted a repayment to the House on Nov. 19 after receiving so much public backlash over his stunt.
“Is this the point that we have come to — that our representatives, civil servants whom the people of Hawaii have invested their trust in, have to be told specifically how to not waste taxpayer dollars?” Saiki said.
“Our representatives are supposed to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. If they want to buy garlic salt, hand towels or area rugs, then perhaps they should do what most people in Hawaii do — use their own hard-earned dollars.”
read ... Lunatic with a Taxpayer Funded Sledgehammer
Youth Detention Center: Employees do Marijuana, Cocaine on the Job
HNN: The number of assaults committed by teenagers at Hawaii's Youth Detention Center in Kapolei tripled between 2010 and 2013, and officials blame the high number of mentally ill kids behind bars as one reason for the spike in beatings.
Roughly 60 percent of the teenage boys and girls who arrive at the detention facility in Kapolei awaiting trial or treatment are mentally ill, officials said.
The number of "substantiated" resident-on-resident assaults nearly doubled from 28 to 45 between 2011 and 2012. Assaults then peaked in 2013, with 72. So far this fiscal year that ends June 30, assaults have decreased to 24....
But even with 24 assaults this year, the number is still troubling because it's happening in a modern, four-year old facility that's far from its 60-bed capacity.
As of Tuesday, there were just 34 boys and girls kids in custody there, and that number can fall to as few as five on occasion, officials said....
"I've been working in this, what should I say, chaos, for over eight years now, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better," said Hailama Kaikaina, a youth detention worker and former union shop steward.
Kaikaina was one of three juvenile detention workers who came forward to complain to Hawaii News Now about problems at the facility.
They said mentally ill kids are sometimes held in the juvenile version of solitary confinement for lengthy periods.
"I've seen detainees that have been there recently upwards of a month, a month and a half, and they haven't assaulted anybody," said Scott Northup, a juvenile detention worker who's been at the facility for more than three years. "Some of them have mental illness. How are we helping them by locking them up in an eight by five cell for 23 hours a day with no help?"
Fellow employee John Taylor, who's been working with youth there for nearly three years, said, "If we're really trying to be a therapeutic facility how are we providing therapy to them? We're not."...
Northup, one of the juvenile detention workers, said his supervisor smoked marijuana at work and he complained to no avail.
"I got coworkers or other people coming in, you know they're under the influence of something. And you'll try to write it up to get it questioned, or to see what's going to happen. Nothing gets done. It gets swept under the rug," Northup said.
Northup said other employees come to work high with no consequences.
The lack of drug testing alarmed Senate Judiciary Chairman Clayton Hee.
"You cannot have workers that may be on drugs trying to treat youngsters who have been psychotic drug abusers or mental illness residents," Hee said.
Maunupau, the facility superintendent, told Hawaii News Now no one notified him about Northrup's complaint and if he had known about it, he would have taken action.
He said he fired one employee recently for using cocaine on the job, but the woman successfully appealed her firing and was reinstated.
read ... Assaults tripled at youth facility; workers not tested for drugs
Tranny, Cronies Seem Defeated After Charter School Ordered to End Nepotism
CB: Now, the nine-member volunteer commission will appoint a new governing board for Halau Lokahi, an authority normally reserved for the schools themselves. (No mo nepotism. So sad.) The school also has to implement a contingency plan that relies on increasing enrollment by a third and eliminating several staff positions.
Commission director Tom Hutton said it remains to be seen whether the school can pull through with its bold financial plan.
“They have a very big hole to climb out of,” he said, noting, “there’s no way to deliver a message like this that’s not incredibly painful.”
It’s still unclear as to how the school will come up with the money to pay the teachers.
The school’s longtime director, Laara Allbrett, wasn’t available for an interview after the decision and didn’t respond to a call seeking comment before deadline. Mr Hina Wong-Kale, a prominent kumu hula who teaches at Halau Lokahi, said after the decision that she (sic) wasn’t ready to comment; she (sic) and some others who attended Wednesday’s meeting in support of the school appeared drawn and silent as they shuffled out.
The school’s original plan to solve the shortage, which commissioners dismissed last week, focused only on clearing outstanding debt from the previous school year, a deficit that officials blamed largely on shrinking enrollment and limited per-pupil funding. A deal to secure a loan also fell through at the last minute, according to Allbrett.
One of the school’s newest contingency plans relied on funding from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, but OHA officials on Wednesday emphasized that the money isn’t guaranteed. The agency’s board only received a formal request from the school on Tuesday, and the information provided was insufficient, said OHA Public Policy Advocate Jocelyn Doane.
CB: Commission Requires Leadership Overhaul at Indebted Charter School
SA: Conditions set for charter's survival "the Honolulu Star-Advertiser has determined that family members make up a quarter of the school's staff. Allbrett's daughter is the business manager/registrar and another daughter is the operations specialist. Allbrett's son teaches middle school while a son-in-law teaches high school social studies and Hawaiian studies. Her son's partner, with whom he has children, is the school's accounting clerk."
2011: “Charter school lessens debt, kin exit board.”
read ... Gravy Train Gone?
DOE puts dozens of teachers on paid leave pending investigations
KHON: Two people getting paid but just one of them is actually working. That’s essentially what’s happening in dozens of cases with the Department of Education because employees are on leave with pay pending investigating while a fill-in does their work.
This double-whammy for taxpayers can drag on for years.
When KHON first investigated this problem last year, there was one person at the DOE to oversee these cases, and a plan for more resources, but many say it’s just not happening fast enough, leaving more people waiting in limbo.
read ... DOE puts dozens of teachers on paid leave pending investigations
Anti-GMO 'Agronomics' Tax Deferred
KGI: A county bill aimed at taxing crop-research land separate from other agricultural land was deferred on Wednesday until Aug. 20, killing any chance of it going into effect during fiscal year 2015-2016....
Tempers flared during Wednesday’s special meeting, when the council’s Finance and Economic Development Committee — absent of its chair Mason Chock — took up the proposed legislation. If passed, Bill 2456 would establish “agronomics” as a new and separate real property tax class and exclude lands used primarily for crop research or parent seed production from the county’s definition of “agricultural use.”
Despite recommendations from council members Bynum and Gary Hooser to instead defer for two weeks, which would have given the bill a chance of taking effect by FY 2016, the committee voted 3-1 to push it back until the August date — 11 days after the primary election.
When Committee Vice Chair JoAnn Yukimura cast the deciding vote, Bynum (who is not a member of the committee) threw his pencil and stormed out of the room.
Adam Killerman, a former employee of McBryde Sugar Co., called Bill 2456 another “assault on agriculture” by the council.
read ... Deferred
GMOs: Who is Fooling Whom?
KE: It was rather curious to read Fern Rosenstiel's guest commentary —oddly posted under “local news” in The Garden Island's online edition — demanding the chem/seed companies adhere to the county's GMO/pesticide regulatory bill.
She writes:
Your time for open, voluntary disclosure has long passed, it’s time to follow the regulations our island has set in place. It’s time you comply with Ordinance 960.
Surely Fern knows Ordinance 960 — the GMO/pesticide regulatory law — was not scheduled to take effect until Aug. 16. Now that date has been delayed to Oct. 1. The rules have not yet been adopted, and four of the five affected companies have filed suit to block the law's implementation.
The court is set to hold hearings on the case on July 23. Due to "the volume of cross motions that have been filed, all parties have entered into a stipulation and order that delays the effective date of the ordinance," according to a county press release.
In the meantime, voluntary disclosure is all we've got. What's more, Ordinance 960 itself relies on voluntary compliance.
It was also interesting to read Fern's assertion that:
Nearly two years ago, I sat down with [Councilman] Gary Hooser and explained that we needed to know how much of these different pesticides, atrazine specifically, they were spraying, that we needed to know where, so we could really target our studies to better understand what the concern is.
And I wondered, if that was the goal, why didn't Bill 2491/Ordinance 960, which Gary introduced, emphasize pesticide studies or health assessments? Instead, the triggers for an EIS in the original bill were linked solely to GMOs, not actual pesticide use, and no studies were mandated.
KOS: More anti-GMO drivel
read ... Kauai Eclectic
Schatz vs Hanabusa #1 Democrat Primary in 2014
CSM: This is the only Democratic Senate primary this cycle that’s competitive, but it’s a barn-burner. Senator Schatz got his seat by gubernatorial appointment in 2012, replacing the late Sen. Daniel Inouye (D).
Schatz’s appointment was controversial: Senator Inouye had requested before his death that Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) give the seat to Rep. Colleen Hanabusa. He appointed Schatz, his lieutenant governor, instead. Schatz is only the second non-Asian to represent Hawaii in the Senate, adding a racial component to the primary.
President Obama, born in Hawaii, has endorsed Schatz. A Civil Beat Poll released May 27 has Schatz up by 5 points, 44 percent to 39 percent. The primary is Aug. 9.
read ... The Christian Science Monitor
Honolulu rail agency may spend another $5M for help with property acquisitions
PBN: The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation wants its board to approve up to $5 million to hire additional staff and legal help to acquire right-of-way properties along the 20-mile rail transit route.
HART says that it is behind schedule in making the property acquisitions and it needs to add six acquisition agents, seven relocation agents, three clerks, survey mapping and appraisal consulting support and more legal help from corporate counsel, Morris Atta, HART’s deputy director of acquisitions, says in a report to the HART board.
The cost would be between $3.5 million to $5 million....
HART began notifying property owners this spring that the agency would acquire some or all of their land for the $5.16 billion rail project. The agency said that it now has to acquire 213 properties for the project. So far, it has acquired 67, the report says.
Atta said HART plans to obtain control of all the properties by December.
PBN: Will Honolulu's rail transit system just be called 'TheTrain'?
read ... Mo Money
HHSC Cost Savings Plan Focuses on Union Overtime
WHT: Three months into a nine-month process, consultants told the West Hawaii Region Board of Directors on Wednesday that they’ve identified at least $4.5 million in savings and revenue opportunities.
“The big focus now is going to be taking those opportunities and putting them in place so we can start to see those savings,” said Michael Saunders, manager with Huron Consulting Group.
KCH engaged Huron to find ways to identify and implement cost savings, enhance financial and operational performance and maintain or improve quality of care delivery. All of these improvements would make the hospital more attractive to a partnership with another health care organization — a major goal for KCH, which is part of the Hawaii Health Systems Corp.
Nineteen initiatives in non-labor areas will save the hospital approximately $1 million in trauma, food service, pharmacy and other areas, consultants said.
A team of KCH staff and Huron consultants are examining billing and collections processes, supplies and purchasing contracts and costs, length of stay management and physician contracting. The hospital is also examining potential changes to how it staffs and schedules employees for greater efficiency and less exhaustion of employees.
Greater detail on the progress was presented to the board in a packet, but the board declined to release the report to the press because it was in draft form.
The hospital’s goal is to reduce overtime by one third, said Chief Financial Officer Dean Herzog.
read ... HGEA Jobs are more important than Health care
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