The question has been asked again and again, in louder and more insistent voices every time, and still there's no clear answer.

Why hasn't the staffing shortage at the State Historic Preservation Division been solved?

Most recently, the call has been taken up by the O'ahu Island Burial Council, as well as an ad hoc group dubbed the Friends of the Burial Sites Program. The basic concern is the same. Because of vacancies in the division, the process of reviewing permit applications for projects that could affect historic sites has bogged down and has reached crisis levels.

At risk is the state's mission to protect historic resources, as well as any rational oversight for development planned throughout the Islands. Failure to solve the problem could lead to the unnecessary destruction of burials or loss of archaeological and historic sites, as well as legal challenges from developers frustrated by delays. The reversals over the treatment of burials at Victoria Ward Village Shops is just one case in point.

But there are surely many more applications heaped on the division's backlog of work. There is no archaeology branch chief or lead archaeologists on O'ahu, Maui or the Big Island, where development pressures are the greatest, and there is no culture and history branch chief. About 21 division employees have left since October 2004.

High turnover has long been a fact of life at the division, predating division head Melanie Chinen's administration.

However, state leadership still owes the public an explanation — and quickly.

The new Department of Land and Natural Resources director, Laura H. Thielen, has to get clear answers on why the positions haven't been filled. She has pointed to a shortage of professionals with minimum qualifications, but this doesn't explain why positions have been filled and then soon became vacant again.

It's created a problem of such alarming significance that Gov. Linda Lingle herself must make sure there's a plan for solving both the shorter-term backlog problem and the larger issue of a critical agency that has limped along for far too long.