Posted on: Sunday, May 27, 2001

Veto would leave Barbers Point staff unemployed

By James Gonser
Advertiser Leeward Bureau

KALAELOA — The jobs of the four staff members of the Barbers Point Naval Air Station Redevelopment Commission are riding on a bill awaiting Gov. Ben Cayetano's signature, a bill that could be vetoed for technical reasons.

The commission, which former Gov. John Waihee formed by executive order in 1994, will continue to operate regardless of whether Cayetano signs Senate Bill 1028, but it includes $160,000 needed to pay the staff for another year. Without that money, all four staff members will be unemployed as of June 30.

Commission executive director William Bass and his staff work out of a small trailer on Fort Barrette Road just outside the old main gate to the former base.

"We are packing up everything in boxes because the (lease on the) trailer expires on June 30 and there is no money to keep it going," Bass said.

A Cayetano spokeswoman, noting that the governor has until June 25 to decide whether to veto the bill, said the measure is being studied.

The 16-member commission has spent the past two years developing a special area plan for the 2,637-acre site, now called Kalaeloa.

"We finished what we set out to accomplish, which was to do a land use plan and get it adopted as a special area use plan by the city," said commission chairman Rick Egged, who also is president of the Waikiki Improvement Association.

The commission still provides a forum for public input on Kalaeloa's redevelopment and land use changes, and, Egged said, is expected to continue to operate even without a staff, possibly working under the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

The technical problems in Senate Bill 1028 arose when the measure was amended. Egged said the original bill would have shifted the commission's responsibilities to the Hawai'i Community Development Authority, which oversees development in Kaka'ako. It created five new Hawai'i Community Development Authority positions to deal with Kalaeloa issues.

However, when the bill was amended to develop a transition plan between the commission and the authority and to provide money for the commission staff salaries for one more year, it made the new Hawai'i Community Development Authority members full voting members on all of the authority's business, not just matters that pertained to Kalaeloa.

According to the authority's executive director, Jan Yokota, such a set-up would create operational and quorum problems.