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Mauna Kea Anti-Telescope Protesters Re-use Successful Haleakala Strategy
HNN: …Wurdeman and others pointed out that Amano and her husband, Donald Amano, are dues-paying member of the Imiloa Astronomy Center. Once called the Mauna Kea Astronomy Education Center, the Imiloa Center is the $28 million dollar exhibition and planetarium complex that supports research being done on Mauna Kea. That center is part of the University of Hawaii Hilo, which is a party to the case.
Abigail Kawananakoa, who has has appeared in the Hawaii Supreme Court as a friend of the court opposing TMT, issued this statement today: "To ignore Amano's bias is yet another egregious violation of public trust. TMT should take note of what lengths the Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Attorney General will go to," she said. "The defenders of Mauna Kea are vigilant and prepared. We are resolute. It's time for TMT to move on."
The DLNR, which hired Amano for the contested case hearings, declined comment. Amano also declined to respond. But in her disclosure with the state, she made no reference to her membership in the Imiloa Center.
Legal experts said that the cannons of judicial ethics require that Amano disclose that relationship. They also said her job description requires that she have "no conflict of interest or appearance of conflict." "It's very important that there isn't even an appearance of a conflict or bias of on the part of a judge because that alone can damage the validity of the outcome of the proceedings," said attorney Victor Bakke.
Amano's contract says she began working for the state on March 30 but a copy of her contract that was released to Hawaii News Now has all the compensation numbers blacked out.
DLNR officials said they would not say how much she's being paid because it would jeopardize negotiations with other candidates if she is removed due to the legal challenges. In her capacity as a mediator in the private sector, Amano charges $400 an hour.
"We have heard from reliable sources that the Attorney General has been actively soliciting hearing officers or potential hearings officer that might actively fit the profile," said Wurdeman. "There's obviously a lot of pressure we believe coming from the administration and this may be a reason for the board rushing the process."
This is not the first time that the impartiality of a DLNR hearings officer on a controversial telescope project has been called into question. Last June, Hawaii News Now reported that the hearings officer in the Haleakala Telescope contested case received more than $100,000 in legal work from the University of Hawaii, two years after he issued the green light for the controversial, $300 million Maui project. UH is the prime mover behind The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope on Maui.
That hearings officer, attorney Lane Ishida, had never done work for the UH prior to serving as the hearings officer for the Haleakala case. UH officials said Ishida was properly hired and that no ethics rules were violated. But native Hawaiians said it looked like a payoff….
Big Q: What do you think about the challenge by Thirty Meter Telescope foes, seeking removal of the contested-case hearing officer?
read … Doomed
Kenoi recommends general excise tax hike
WHT: Mayor Billy Kenoi is recommending the County Council pass a one-half percent increase in the general excise tax, but not all council members are on board.
The council Finance Committee will hold a public hearing at 5 p.m. today to let the public weigh in on the added tax. The public can testify in person at the West Hawaii Civic Center, or by video conference from Hilo council chambers, the Waimea council office, the Naalehu state office building or the Pahoa neighborhood facility.
No decision will be made at the meeting.
Council members have been unsure about the measure, with Puna Councilman Greggor Ilagan the only flat-out “no” so far. The council members, with an election looming, are asking their constituents to come forward and speak their minds.
But the term-limited Kenoi, who will no longer be in office when the measure would go into effect in 2018, told council members during a budget briefing Wednesday they should pass the measure, Bill 165, because the county might need the money. (And you the taxpayers will not?)
As Explained: Billy Kenoi was last one Left in Old Boys Political Bullpen
read … Time to Resign
House, Senate Set To Negotiate Budget
CB: With the 2016 legislative session rapidly nearing sine die May 5, House and Senate lawmakers have started appointing members from their respective chambers to serve on conference committees tasked with trying to reach agreements on the final language of hundreds of bills.
The first measure to be scheduled is House Bill 1700, the overall state budget bill.
Senate Ways and Means Chair Jill Tokuda and House Finance Chair Sylvia Luke will steer the joint conference committee. Their first meeting to start ironing out a final version of the state’s $13 billion spending plan for fiscal 2017, which starts July 1, is set for 2 p.m. Tuesday in Conference Room 309 at the Capitol.
One of the biggest differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget is $160 million for the Hawaii State Hospital. The House cut out that request from Gov. David Ige’s administration but the Senate put it back into the budget.
That bill and numerous others will be debated almost entirely in private before the public hearings begin….
read … Negotiate
ESSA gives Ige (HSTA) a new way to push education agenda
SA: Hawaii’s public education system and local politics are never far apart, and a new move by Gov. David Ige appears to show a broadening conflict at the intersection…..
Background: Ige Appoints Task Force on ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’
read … Push
Hawaii lawmakers look to audit civil asset forfeiture unit
HNN: …Right now, law enforcement can take Hawaii residents' property without a conviction as long as it's tied to a crime. Then, they can sell it and keep the profits.
But lawmakers say that can promote abuse of the state's civil asset forfeiture law. In response, they're considering a resolution to ask for an audit to figure out how law enforcement and prosecutors are using money made from selling seized property. It would also examine how many times property was seized in cases where there weren't convictions.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii says the state has one of the worst asset forfeiture laws in the nation….
read … Asset
Looming Fight Over Importing LNG into Hawaii
IM: Hawaiian Electric Company has informed federal and state regulators that it will shortly ask the Hawai`i Public Utilities Commission for “approval of a contract to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) for electricity generation.” …
“If energy is force, then power is its measure and politics is the arena where they battle for control,”wrote Stuart H. Coleman, in the current edition of Green Magazine Hawaii.
“In the past year, Hawai`i has become a battleground between political leaders fighting to develop the state’s renewable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal and wave) and powerful utility companies clinging to their control over an antiquated energy-producing empire that relies on fossil fuels (crude oil and natural gas) to generate electricity.”
(Translation: Mainland Billionaires and their local minions will do everything they can to keep your electric bill high by blocking LNG.)
PBN: Hawaiian Electric interested in renewable energy projects on A&B’s Maui sugar lands
read … Looming Fight
What really happened at the ʻAha, part V
HI: Around 1:30 p.m. on the afternoon of February 25, the ʻAha participants received the final “final draft” of the newly drafted constitution.
Claire Hughes, a silver-haired Oʻahu kupuna, now stood before the mic to move to adopt the “Native Hawaiian Constitution.” As if on cue, the motion to adopt appeared on the screen at the front of the room.
Protest erupted immediately. The idea of an up-or-down vote on a constitution that had just arrived didn’t sit well with many participants….
read … Part V
Calvin Say: Taxpayers Subsidize Tourism with $143M Each Year
CB: This past week, the state House of Representatives voted to decrease Oahu’s share of the Transient Accommodations Tax from 44.1 percent to 30 percent, claiming it is time to revisit each county’s share of the TAT. By any criteria, allocating only 30 percent to Oahu is absurd. I voted against the measure.
Oahu generates the highest total in tourism-related revenues. Over 60 percent of tourists to Hawaii visit Oahu, spending 46 percent of all visitor days here — almost as many visitor days spent on all the neighbor islands combined. Oahu is also home to about half of all transient accommodations units, including 61 percent of all hotel rooms.
With all this activity comes a significant burden in terms of services, and Oahu spends almost as much on visitors as all the other counties combined. In fact, Honolulu spends approximately $116 million on visitors but only receives $41 million from its share of the TAT, or about 35 percent of its total expenditures. Oahu taxpayers had to fund the remaining nearly $75 million in visitor expenses.
By comparison, neighbor island counties combined spent $120 million and received about $52 million in TAT revenues or about 43 percent of their expenditures — 8 percent higher than Oahu. Neighbor island taxpayers were responsible for $68 million in visitor expenses, which is almost $7 million less than Oahu taxpayers.
In other words, based on visitor expenditures and revenues, Honolulu should actually receive more than 44.1 percent of TAT revenues!…
read … Why We Should Not Reduce Oahu’s Share Of The TAT
When Anti-Superferry Protesters are in Charge, Snorkelers Die
CB: More than a dozen people have died on commercial tours in Hawaii since 2012, including four people in a 14-month period on snorkeling trips with (tha Anti-Superferry) Pacific Whale Foundation, which boats customers to Molokini Crater off the coast of Maui.
Earlier this year, as part of our “Dying For Vacation” series that explored why more visitors die in Hawaii than other vacation destinations, we looked into commercial tour operators as one component of the broader issue.
We wanted to find out what the state does to regulate this burgeoning industry, so in December I emailed the communications officers at the Department of Land and Natural Resources to start gathering some basic information. Four months later, I’ve received repeated assurances that information is coming — but nothing else.
read … Pacific Whale
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