{"id":4773,"date":"2019-03-28T23:44:36","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T23:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawaiioceannews.com\/?p=4773"},"modified":"2019-04-02T00:53:37","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T00:53:37","slug":"open_letter_to_hawaii_attorney_general_clare_connors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hawaiioceannews.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/28\/open_letter_to_hawaii_attorney_general_clare_connors\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to Hawaii Attorney General, Clare Connors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tLetter to Hawaii's AG Asks for Immediate Investigation into Possible Illegal Collusion\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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An open letter to Hawaii's Attorney General, Clare Connors<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Aloha Attorney General Connors,<\/span><\/p>\n

We would like to begin by fulfilling a promise that we made to you regarding an error in one of our previous posts about your alleged involvement in the initial review of the Chapter 13-234 rules package proposal.\u00a0 We now understand that the legal review in question occurred during Russell Suzuki's tenure.\u00a0\u00a0 As promised, we have since taken down that post and have deleted any reference to it anywhere on our Hawaii Ocean News website and on our social media sites. We also promised to tender a formal apology in an \"upcoming\" post.\u00a0 This will now serve as that post. We are, indeed, truly sorry for our mistake.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In our defense, the error, an honest one, was dictated by circumstance.\u00a0 To anyone in the State of Hawaii who has anxiously applied for a permit and has had to rely on State procedural timelines, it might appear shocking that this rules package has achieved uncharacteristically swift timeline\/approval processing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By way of a brief history: On two previous occasions, \u00a713-234 had been deferred\/rejected by the BLNR and, on a third attempt, the very same document, with the very same wording, barely found approval on Dec 7th, 2018.\u00a0\u00a0 That was on a Friday, mid-day, during the Thanksgiving\/Christmas\/New Year\u2019s holiday season, when employees are more worried about gifting obligations than the drill at work.\u00a0 After approval, this document then finds its way from the BLNR dais on December 7th, to the AG's office, that very same day, in something that could only be described as warp speed, by Hawaii standards.\u00a0 Your deputy attorney general then reads this voluminous document, word-for-word, carefully vetting for legal problems, and by that following Monday morning, December 10th<\/sup>, the document is sitting on the Governor's desk waiting for his perusal. One must then assume that the Governor, having nothing better to do that day, immediately took up the task of reviewing, word-for-word, the rules package.\u00a0 Miraculously, the DLNR had this very same document back in their hands well before Christmas break and well before January 3rd, the day of your appointment to the AG post, ready for public hearing scheduling.\u00a0 Interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was hard for us, or anyone we've talked to, to imagine that this document, during its preliminary review process timeline, wouldn't have crossed the threshold into your tenure.\u00a0 However, the reporting mistake was ours, and our apologies are tendered.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nLegally Troubling Transparency Issues That Stoke Questions About the Need for an Investigation into Illegal Collusion Between Private Interests and Certain Senators and DLNR\/DoBOR Operatives<\/em><\/span>
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First of all, the entire 13-234 rules packet proposal is contrived, arbitrary and capricious, and is a dishonest attempt to distract public attention away from the central focus at DLNR\/DoBOR, one that seeks to privatize<\/strong> ocean recreation public assets.\u00a0 To wit:<\/span><\/p>\n

While DoBOR's website states that fee increases are necessary because \"due to funding constraints and funding priorities, DoBOR is unable to keep up with its backlog of deferred maintenance projects\"\u00a0 (https:\/\/dlnr.hawaii.gov\/dobor\/proposed-fee-increase\/<\/a>), DoBOR actually has no intention of performing any deferred maintenance projects using increased slip fees.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather, DoBOR's \"Strategic Plan 2019\" (hereinafter, the \"Plan\") states that DoBOR will be selecting \"private entities with which to partner and issue them long-term leases to attract funds for improvement projects.\u00a0 The selected companies will perform harbor management, maintenance, and improvement project tasks under the division's supervision.\"\u00a0 (see Plan at 20, available at\u00a0https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/19Q4033OhixrFBXaFcOWifzpp3if16dMs\/view<\/a>).\u00a0 Under the Plan, the companies that are \"selected\" by DoBOR will generate revenue by development of fast lands within the Harbors, which DoBOR states \"have immense commercial development potential to attract greater foot traffic in harbor areas and yield higher income to the State.\"\u00a0 Plan at 11.\u00a0 DoBOR states that a public private partnership of this sort will bring in \"capital for much-needed infrastructure development, optimized revenue to honor the public interest, and freed up resources to allocate towards other needs, advantages that Hawai'i direly needs.\"\u00a0 Plan at 13.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is therefore clear that DoBOR's purpose in raising fees for harbor users is not to increase funds \"to keep up with its backlog of deferred maintenance projects\" as it claims, but instead to drive tenants out to make room for commercial development.\u00a0 Given that mooring permits and especially live-aboard permits are constitutionally protected property for Due Process purposes (Brown v. Thompson, 91 Hawai`i 1, 11, 979 P.2d 586, 596 (1999) (\"a mooring or live-aboard permit constitutes a constitutionally protected property interest\"), the Courts will certainly take a hard look at rules that, when taken in context of DoBOR's concurrent actions, appear solely intended to drive out tenants under the guise of funding \"deferred maintenance.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

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Demand for Investigation<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Right now, there are ten million visitors per year that come to Hawaii to spend money in our tourism industry. There is a huge amount of money at stake for private interests who are successful in obtaining the State\u2019s blessing to control public lands and assets. Once a precedent has been established, private interests could then expect ongoing, highly profitable, visitor enterprise to continue indefinitely into the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The stakes are too high for these latter private interests to fail in their bid for privatization.\u00a0 Because of this, and because of the suspicious nature of the effort by State operatives in the form of: \u00a0their unnatural level of persistence in their pursuit of the privatization option; their utilization of deception and deceit to deflect public participation and awareness away from their main focus, which clearly seems to be privatization; \u00a0and, what appears to be, a pattern of deliberately ignoring the volumes of public testimony<\/a> with nagging questions about the DLNR\u2019s deliberate neglect of harbor properties (in anticipation of a private takeover). \u00a0The evidence continues to mount, and, at this juncture, we have no other choice but to demand that your office launch, at the earliest possible time, a full investigation into possible illegal collusion between State of Hawaii operatives and representatives of private interests who may be petitioning for leasehold of public lands and assets.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Regarding: Some of the legally questionable sections that should have been flagged in \u00a713-234 by the AG\u2019s office on the preliminary go-around<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span>
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\n<\/strong>Your deputy attorneys general in your Land\/Transportation Division may now have on their desk, or will soon have, a copy of a possibly updated and final version of the Chapter 13-234 rules package, submitted to them by the Department of Land and Natural Resources.\u00a0 If the document has been updated, it does not yet appear to be available.\u00a0 If you have a copy of the updated version, we would like a copy. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n

We have submitted to your office, on at least two occasions, a copy of our observations detailing the legally objectionable and ethically contentious<\/a> verbiage contained within this rules package, with a request that these latter sections of 13-234 be reworded so as to transparently and truthfully communicate the fee-for-services\/facilities usage content.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As noted previously, the document, in its current form, openly and unabashedly lies to the public in an attempt to rationalize additional fees.\u00a0 Here, specifically, are some of the sections containing misleading verbiage; this cross-section of examples, by no means, represents all of the deceit embodied in this document:<\/span><\/p>\n