WAILUKU, Maui — The county has released a draft of the Maui Island Plan prepared by consultant Chris Hart & Partners, The Maui News reported.

The county payed $76,720 for the work, then spent four months rewriting it before presenting a revised version to the General Plan Advisory Committee in April. Planning Director Jeff Hunt initially said he would not release the "working draft," but last week changed his decision after receiving requests from advisory committee members and The Maui News.

"We'd like to release it so there's no fear or suspicion that we're holding anything back," Hunt said.

The Maui Island Plan will map growth for the next 20 years. The 25-member advisory panel will make recommendations on the plan, which will then go to the Maui Planning Commission and ultimately the Maui County Council for approval. The advisory committee has already completed recommendations on a draft of countywide planning policies.

Chris Hart's draft was part of a larger contract for $456,699 with his firm and Honolulu-based Plan Pacific to consult on the General Plan update.

According to contract documents, Hart was assigned to "prepare preliminary draft Maui Island Plan elements," including an introduction; island history; chapters on heritage resources, growth management, housing, economic development and infrastructure; an implementation schedule and a monitoring program. On Nov. 6, Hart submitted a 460-page report containing all those elements, meeting his deadline.

County planners spent the next four months revising and finalizing the draft, trimming it down to 167 pages. Changes included placing a significant amount of supporting material into a separate volume, removing policy statements that had already been covered in the Policy Plan, and editing for a clearer, simpler style.

Hart said he was concerned the extensive revision of his document, and Hunt's description of it as a "working draft" and his initial refusal to release it, could create the appearance that his firm's work was unsatisfactory — "and that's absolutely false," he said.

Hart also said taxpayers deserved to see the plan they paid for.

"There was a lot of money spent on it that was basically taxpayer dollars, and I (felt) bad about that," he said. "It was well-spent money, and the product was a good product."

He said he was pleased that the county released the draft.

Hunt stressed that he's said publicly that Hart produced a good draft.

"We don't think his work was unsatisfactory, and we've gone to what I would consider some effort to make that clear," he said.

Revising the document was largely a style decision, he added.

"One of our concerns was the thickness of it," Hunt said. "We felt it should be condensed and made more user-friendly."

The Planning Department also added "urban growth boundaries" to plan maps, a task that was not part of Hart's contract.

Hunt noted that when Chris Hart was first hired for the General Plan update, some people raised concerns about contracting with a consultant who also works for developers. The Planning Department pledged it would have the last word on the plan.

"That's exactly what happened," he said.

Another reason the draft was revised was that Long Range Planning Director John Summers worked with the consultant early on but was on medical leave when the draft was completed, Hunt said. The new planner "had different ideas, as any planner would," he said.

In coordinating on the draft, Summers worked closely with his twin brother, Michael Summers, a planner for Chris Hart & Partners who has had a leading role in the firm's work on the General Plan. Hart acknowledged that some advisory committee members and people in the community have raised concerns about the brothers' close working relationship, but he did not think it had been a problem. Hunt also said he was comfortable.

"We made decisions in a team environment," he said. "It wasn't just decisions being made by John and his brother."

John Summers and Michael Summers both declined to comment.

In an e-mail, Hunt maintained that, after consulting with county attorneys, he still believed the Chris Hart draft was exempt from open-records laws. Hawaii's "Sunshine Law" exempts documents that are "deliberative" and "predecisional" — meaning they make a recommendation or opinion, and are used by a decision-maker in the process of making a decision. The law is meant to avoid stifling the candid exchange of ideas and opinions.

Hunt said he believed the Chris Hart draft qualified for that exemption, and that "working drafts, including plans, may be withheld from public review." But he added that the county "decided" to release the draft anyway.

"In this case, the Planning Department believes the right by the public to have access to the preliminary plan outweighs any protection of staff discussions," Hunt wrote.

Advisory committee member Dick Mayer, who had requested access to the draft, said he was glad he got a chance to compare it with the later version.

He said the work produced by Chris Hart was more detailed and contained more information. In particular, the base maps prepared by Hart were significantly more detailed than the ones used in the final draft, he added.

"What I would like to see are the urban growth boundaries placed on these maps, to allow us to see in much better detail where the boundary line goes," Mayer said.

He understood the Planning Department's desire to make the plan readable but said it also needed to have enough information and context to be understandable to readers years in the future.

"Obviously it's a dilemma," he said. "On the one hand, you want to make it simple. On the other hand, you want to make it helpful to the people who are going to implement the plan."

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