Updated at 10:59 a.m., Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Lingle, Inouye at odds over Kalaeloa land
By Dennis Camire
Advertiser Washington Bureau
The governor, in Washington for a National Governors Association meeting, wants the Navy to give the 500 acres to the state for free — for a mix of housing, high-technology business and other uses.
"We're all united in that the state should gain control of this land," Lingle said yesterday. "Now we will continue to have discussions about how that should come about."
Inouye, chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, wants the state to pay for the land and have the money go into a special federal account used for continued redevelopment at Ford Island.
"The state is going to need to pay market value for the land," Jennifer Sabas, chief of staff for Inouye, said yesterday.
A federal law, which Inouye sponsored in Congress during the mid-1990s, requires the Navy to sell or lease any excess land in Hawai'i for full market value and the money to be used in redeveloping Ford Island, Sabas said.
Sabas said the arrangement was seen as a way to shorten the time it would take to redevelop Ford Island, which in recent years has seen the construction of a new National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration center, an aviation museum, military housing and other projects.
Lingle knew of Inouye's position, but in a meeting with Navy Secretary Donald Winter on Friday she said the state should get the land for free. She argued the state should put its money into the water, power and sewer systems needed for developing it.
Lingle said yesterday she would encourage Inouye and Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, to find the money needed for Ford Island "among the federal funds they have access to."
"If we use our resources to buy it, then we don't have the resources to actually move it (the project) forward," Lingle said. "We won't have accomplished what we need to and that's why I think it needs to be more of a partnership (with) the federal government so the senator and the congressman help us to get the land."
The acreage consists of several pieces of land that are part of the former Barbers Point Naval Air Station along Roosevelt Avenue.
The idea behind developing the land is to give the Leeward Coast a new economic engine that will include jobs and housing, especially affordable units to help with the state's homeless population, Lingle said.
