Hawaii DoBOR’s Ed Underwood Appears Dangerously Incompetent

Opinion

A growing number of news articles from around the web, and our own research, leave little room for doubt, at this stage, that Hawaii DoBOR’s Ed Underwood should immediately step down from his administrator’s position in order to save boaters, Statewide, the further grief and danger inherent to his continuing and long history of mismanagement of Hawaii’s public harbor system.

Red flags began appearing for us more than a year ago during interviews with Underwood wherein he seemed to feel very comfortable with less than truthful responses.  We would soon learn that Mr. Underwood was not only comfortable lying to the press, but with lying to State legislators, during testimony.

Our investigation of the recent Navatek II debacle, in which Underwood was at center, reveals that the derelict 82-foot, 149 passenger commercial tour ship was backdoored into the public harbor system – making it instantly privy to the Special Boating Fund – via a wink-nod DoBOR-only arrangement that completely excluded the harbormaster at the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor.  The handling of the Navatek II disaster will cost the Special Boating Fund tens of thousands of dollars -- a number that could go over six figures, when all is said and done.  All of this money will come out of the Special Boating Fund.  Next Friday, the DLNR will ask its Board to approve a proposal to increase boater fees in order to replenish this same Fund, exhausted mainly through DoBOR bungling.

The 800-row pier at the Ala Wai Small Boat harbor needed new electrical wiring in order to provide power to those slips.  DoBOR accepted a bid from a company that was not capable of performing the service.  The screw-up cost the Special Boating Fund as much as $100,000.  Recreational boaters will be asked, next Friday, to pay still more money into the Fund in order to make up for this and similar debits.

Underwood has been the architect of one subterfuge after another, the latest being a law-mandated “public hearing” that gave the public the right to be heard, for or against the DoBOR-authored, ill-conceived rules package that included a monstrous recreational boater fee increase proposal (Chapter 13-234).  Meeting rooms were packed-to-overflowing across the State, but the public found itself talking to themselves, as low-ranking, mostly disinterested, DoBOR and DLNR underlings showed up to move seats and tables around and little more.  Agency leaders, and the ones that should have been present for this testimony, Ed Underwood and Suzanne Case, were nowhere to be found.  The public was outraged.  DoBOR and the DLNR later indicated that they couldn’t have cared less.

Underwood's latest collusionary brainchild seems destined to hand over public harbors around the State of Hawaii over to private, for-profit interests, resulting in House Bill 1032, now awaiting the Governor David Ige's decision.  In an interview, at 1 P.M. yesterday, June 7th, 2019, with one of the financial interests that had its sights set on bidding on and “. . . winning” the right to lease the Ala Wai Marine property, found himself completely shut out of the process “within a week” of the bidding process.  “The whole thing was an inside job . . . the winning bidder was pre-picked . . .  there is little doubt in our minds that illegal collusion is at play . . . we are very disappointed.”

As current investigations reveal more, we will update our readers In upcoming articles. 

Sadly, our Attorney General, Clare Connors, seems paralyzed with disinterest and continues to sit idly by while State agency operatives pad their own coffers while bilking the public and simultaneously allowing our beautiful public harbor system to further deteriorate.  

On a related issue:

In a previous article we cited Lanai's Manele Bay privatization attempt by misguided legislators not paying attention to the will of the people.  Below, we ask that you add your name to the growing number of residents who oppose the act of privatization of public lands and assets.