OHA sets priorities, goals for $16 million budget

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

For the first time since it was created in 1978, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs is working with a strategic plan, which ties its $16.3 million budget for the current fiscal year to specific goals and priorities.

Haunani Apoliona says a new plan for OHA "focuses on outcomes." Advertiser library photo

Apoliona called the plan adopted by the OHA board of trustees in April a "template for planning." She said it eliminates secret agendas and creates accountability.

"This is a methodical community-grounded plan that provides direction to our staff on how to address needs in the community," Apoliona said. "People want to see outcomes and the strategic plan focuses on outcomes."

The strategic plan will affect all residents, not only Native Hawaiians, who represent the fourth-largest ethnic group in Hawai'i with a population base of nearly 240,000, according to the 2000 Census.

The plan's goals for the next five years are outlined in 10 action plans: advocacy-native rights, culture, economic development, education, environmental-natural resources, nationhood, policy, social services, land and housing, and health.

Each plan includes specific strategies and a timetable.

For example, the goal for advocacy-native rights calls for OHA by 2007 to create a legal way to assure the agency will have a steady, predictable stream of revenue from ceded lands, one of the major issues facing the agency.

OHA was established by a 1978 state constitutional amendment for the benefit of Native Hawaiians. The amendment also directed the state to pay an unspecified share of money from revenue obtained from ceded lands. Those lands — about 1.3 million acres or a third of the land in Hawai'i — once belonged to the Hawaiian monarchy, but are now held in trust by the state.

Settling exactly what is owed to OHA and how the money will be dispersed is a priority in the strategic plan since OHA has not received such monies since July 2001. The amount the state owes OHA has been a matter of longstanding dispute.

In September 2001, the Hawai'i Supreme Court complicated the issue by first striking down then Circuit Judge Daniel Heely's 1996 ruling that would have paved the way for OHA receiving an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars from the state. The court also overturned a 1990 state law that set up a detailed mechanism for calculating the state's debt to OHA. The court ruled that state law was in conflict with federal law.

"We're looking at the long-term strategy of amending federal law and a short-term strategy of trying to get the Legislature to re-enact (the state law)," OHA Administrator Clyde Namu'o said.

OHA's budget includes $2.5 million from the Legislature for program development; $12 million comes from the agency's $300 million investment portfolio.

Namu'o began implementing the strategic plan July 1. Six of the 15 top-priority projects slated for the first six months of implementation involve the advocacy-native rights action plan, he noted.

They include establishing a "legal think tank" to address issues such as ceded lands revenue, creating a plan for statewide public hearings on blood quantum, conducting a survey on all candidates running for political office to determine where they stand on specific Native Hawaiian issues, and developing an automated intake and referral system to serve the needs of beneficiaries.

Blood quantum is an issue that polarizes the Native Hawaiian community. The use of OHA trust funds is limited to solely benefit those Native Hawaiians of 50 percent or more blood quantum.