Hawaii five-no: the scourge of separatism

National Review, Sept 26, 2005 by Alston B. Ramsay

The agency is notoriously wasteful. A state audit earlier this year found that the "OHAhas shown little improvement in its ability to serve Hawaiians since our last audit in 2001.... The Board of Trustees still has not provided the State with a comprehensive master plan for bettering the conditions of native Hawaiians and Hawaiians.... OHA is still grappling with the effects of poorly planned reorganizations. ... OHA lacks basic policies and procedures to guide the actions of its staff, and its organizational charts and functional statements are inconsistent.... OHA's casual administration of its finances does not demonstrate respect for its fiduciary duty to all Hawaiians.... Certain protocol and trustee expenditures appear questionable." There have, however, been a few improvements: Unlike the last audit, this one did not find any trustees giving themselves interest-free loans, or buying dentures with OHA money.

The absurdities of the OHA are not incidental to the native-rights debate: They are in fact fundamental to it, for they represent a small-scale model of what the new governing entity could become. There will be the same entrenched self-interests, wielding a tremendous budget, but what little oversight there is now will be removed. And of course, since the OHA has spearheaded the independent-government movement, and has connections with the whole native-rights community, you can bet that its administrators will have the inside track on positions in the new government.

There is, naturally, an electoral element to all this: Lingle is the state's first Republican governor in 40 years, and is thought to be angling to replace one of the state's Democratic senators upon retirement (both are in their eighties). If the Akaka bill can help woo Hawaii, long a Democratic stronghold, into the GOP's camp, then the national party will surely support her candidacy. (Lingle already has the ear of the president: She campaigned relentlessly for him last year, delivered a speech at the national convention, and was the only GOP governor invited to the final presidential debate.)

Last year Republicans made state-level inroads across the nation, but in Hawaii the party lost five seats in the state house and gained nothing in the senate. Lingle's agenda has come to a grinding halt this year, and about the only campaign promise she's keeping these days is the one about supporting the Akaka bill. She's pinned much of her own political future on its success. If the Akaka bill doesn't pass muster in D.C., it will mark another failure for Lingle. If it does pass Congress, and the new government is a surprising success, it will remain a Democratic initiative pushed through by Democratic senators. There's one other likely outcome: If the Akaka bill becomes law, and Hawaii descends into racial chaos, Lingle will have to shoulder part of the blame not just for failing to prevent the measure, but for actively lobbying on its behalf. "She's putting a huge knife into the Republican party," Zimmerman says, and the political fallout could set the GOP back even further in Hawaii.