Posted on: Tuesday, April 29, 2003
ISLAND VOICES
Just say no to special interests
By Kenneth B. Marcus
Commercial real estate lawyer in Honolulu
Several years ago Carl Watanabe, the chief administrative officer of the state Land Court, identified a significant problem: Several large time-share projects were being created on Land Court properties, and it was apparent to him that the Land Court could not issue in a timely manner, and thereafter monitor, the many thousands of certificates of title that would result from such projects.
Every certificate of title to be issued by the Land Court requires that it research the title to the interest to be created, that a separate formal statement of all matters affecting the title be prepared and certified (the "certificate of title") and that the Land Court issue an order creating the new title.
The Land Court is already experiencing a serious backlog in processing ordinary, single-parcel requests; when several thousands of certificates of title need to be issued at a single time, the Land Court would be swamped.
To deal with this looming problem, Mr. Watanabe suggested that time-share intervals be removed from Land Court jurisdiction (voluntarily in the first instance, and ultimately by mandate). People receiving a time-share interval title would still obtain title, but the recordation would be in the Bureau of Conveyances, but without requiring court intervention.
In effect, Mr. Watanabe identified an area where the state could not provide the service required by its citizenry, where the state's procedures were in fact an impediment, and submitted to the Legislature a bill designed to solve the problem. The bill was supported by every constituency with an interest in time-share titles.
Every constituency but one, that is. The employees of the Land Court, sensing that removing this one major problem created by the Land Court might lead the public to examine whether there was any need for the Land Court at all, opposed the bill solely for the purpose of ensuring against the possibility that someday the Land Court might be exposed as an unnecessary institution. Our representatives caved, and the bill was killed.
It's time our elected representatives stand up to special-interest groups and put the welfare of the people first. We are all made poorer when our legislators insist that keeping the size of the state bureaucracy large is more important than creating an atmosphere in which private industry can prosper.
