A joint House committee will decide on Wednesday whether a bill that would create a new governing body for Maunakea will advance in the state Legislature.
A trio of state House of Representatives committees — Finance, Water and Land, and Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs — met on Saturday to discuss House Bill 2024, a proposal to remove the University of Hawaii as the managing authority over Maunakea’s summit lands and create a new state body, the Maunakea Stewardship Authority.
However, after a lengthy discussion, Kohala Rep. David Tarnas, chair of the Water and Land Committee, moved to postpone action on the bill until Wednesday.
“We acknowledge the very strong opinions on both sides of this issue,” Tarnas said. “This debate is not over, as to what is the best management framework for Maunakea.”
Tarnas said the joint meeting was held Saturday specifically to allow more residents a chance to provide testimony about the bill. More than 350 pages of written testimony were submitted in advance of the meeting, and several people provided oral testimony at the meeting itself.
Most of the oral testimony on Saturday was provided by representatives of state agencies, many of whom were members of last year’s legislative Maunakea Working group, whose final report in December formed the basis for HB 2024.
Those agency representatives were skeptical of the bill. Department of Land and Natural Resources Chair Suzanne Case said her department opposes the bill, saying that UH already does a good job of managing Maunakea’s summit.
“I think people use the word ‘management’ differently,” Case said during the meeting. “They often use it as more of overall policy or politics, and certainly there are broader cultural issues embedded in this work on Maunakea, but as far as management goes, there is a strong management framework in place that we believe should continue.”
Case added that a 2020 DLNR evaluation of UH’s management of the summit lands found that the mountain’s natural and cultural resources were “very well managed.”
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs took no stance on the bill Saturday, but raised some concerns about how leadership of the proposed Maunakea Stewardship Authority would mesh with the current state bureaucracy. In particular, OHA CEO Sylvia Hussey pointed out that the bill would place the OHA CEO on the MSA’s management board, even though OHA’s authority resides with OHA’s elected trustees.
In addition, Hussey questioned that the MSA would be attached to the Board of Land and Natural Resources “for administrative purposes,” noting that, because UH is only managing the summit lands on a DLNR lease, the BLNR is actually at the root of any of UH’s management failings.
Greg Chun, UH’s executive director of Maunakea Stewardship, the current Maunakea governing body, naturally said UH opposes the bill, in part because of the MSA’s proposed responsibility to develop a plan to return the summit to its natural state.
“Maunakea is truly deserving of the highest levels of stewardship,” Chun said. “Decisions on access to Maunakea for culture, science, education, recreation, and commercial activities require broader policy discussions involving stakeholders across multiple communities and policymakers on Hawaii Island and the state. No single state entity should have the sole authority to make that policy decision on behalf of the state.”
Chun also questioned whether HB 2024 has a proper grasp on how complex management of the mountain would actually be.
He pointed out that the MSA would be managing a much larger area than UH currently does — the bill places all Maunakea lands above the 6,500-foot level under MSA authority — and to a much more granular degree.
Chun noted that UH’s annual Maunakea management costs are about $12 million. No annual budget for the MSA is currently set in the bill, but Hilo Rep. Mark Nakashima previously estimated it could be around $4 million.
Hilton Lewis, director of the W.M. Keck Observatory, speaking on behalf of the Maunakea Observatories, did not oppose or support the bill, but urged the lawmakers, if they passed the bill, to extend the observatories’ leases so that they would not all have to begin the decommissioning process before the end of the decade. He also said the three-year transition period set forth in the bill is too short, and should be five years long at minimum.
Other testifiers were more firmly against the bill. Several business owners, tour operators in particular, said their already struggling businesses likely would be forced to close if a new organization were to limit commercial access to the mountain.
Another oft-repeated concern was based on the proposed makeup of the MSA’s board. Because at least three of the MSA’s nine-member board would be required to be Native Hawaiian, many testifiers feared the measure was racially exclusionary and unconstitutional.
Cultural practitioner Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, a member of the Maunakea Working Group, was one of the few testifiers Saturday to support the bill, urging the Legislature to pass it with minor amendments.
Those amendments, which were echoed in a form letter submitted by dozens of residents, would include four kanawai, or edicts, featured within the working group’s report in the language of the bill itself, and would formally establish the mountain’s name as “Mauna a Wakea,” a traditional name for the mountain.
As for the hundreds of pages of written testimony, opposition and support for the bill was broadly split between ideological lines, with those opposed to the bill doing so out of their concern for the future of astronomy, and those who support the bill doing so out of a conviction that no further development on the mountain should be permitted.
After a long and inconclusive discussion, the joint committees will make a final decision on the matter Wednesday, whereupon it will face second and final reading in the House. If successful, it will proceed to the Senate to face further scrutiny.
But Waialae Rep. Bertrand Kobayashi, member of the Water and Land Committee, was unconvinced that the measure has any meaningful future.
“My concern is that this bill might not go far, particularly given the opposition of two principal departments — DLNR and UH — and that it is in danger of veto,” Kobayashi said.
Wednesday’s meeting will take place at 11 a.m.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.