Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 1, 1 January 2009 — Trustees need to be more involved [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Trustees need to be more involved

£ A no'ai kakou... Happy Year of the /\ Ox! 1. \. A fellow trustee recently asked me if the tone of my monthly message would change since OHA's leadership remains exactly the same as it was before this past November's eleehon. I will always eonhnue to do what I have always done, wliieh is tell the truth, keep our beneficiaries informed and fight for what is riglit. However, in this New Year, I continue to hope that there will be changes at OHA to make things better here for everyone. Make no mistake - OHA's problems have not simply vanished. The challenges to our administration and to our tmstees impact all of us. The change we were all hoping for will not occur unless both trustees and administrative staff find a way to work together. The biggest problem is that the majority of trustees are severely undemtihzed. The current two-committee system allows Chair Apohona to ignore trustees that disagree with her and it encourages other tmstees to simply coast by and basically do notliing but show up to vote for her agenda. No trustee ean refute this point. Despite the many requests by trustees and our beneficiaries, OHA meetings are not televised like the City Council and the state Legislature on 'Ōlelo with minimal cost. If OHA meetings were televised, the general pubhc and our beneficiaries would be able to judge for themselves how tliings are going. I beheve that being a tmstee is not about having a fancy title and simply showing up at few montlily meetings. It's about proactively working for the benefit of our people. With the many emergencies we face, our beneficiaries cannot afford to have any passive tmstees. Instead of being a proactive agency with a variety of programs to help our beneficiaries, OHA now operates hke a charitable foundation that just hands out grants. Wliile the grants do go to worthy causes, I can't help but feel that OHA is just passing thebuck. I'm not saying that OHA should or could do everytliing, but I do beheve that OHA ean do mueh more for our benehciaries in terms of programs and services. The problem with simply handing out grants is that you can't deal with long-term problems and the grant monies eventually mn out and services get cut. That's why we need ongoing

OHA programs monitored by the trustees. Many of our people are forced to live on the beach because of the laek of affordable houses and rentals. OHA has been talking for years about helping our homeless beneficiaries get into shelters and transitional housing. When is something meaningful going to happen? We have nine tmstees with an incredible amount of combined talents and experiences. We also have over a hundred staff members who are eager to make a difference. But without proactive leadersliip, notliing wih ever get done. There used to be hve committees - Land, Policy & Planning, Program Management, Legislative & Government Affairs and Budget & Finance - however, the current leadersliip consohdated the five committees into just two committees, wliieh ehminates three committee chair positions for tmstees. Tliis is the most ineffective committee stmcture I have served under. Currently, Tmstee Stender oversees ah of OHA's fiscal, pohcy, eeonomie development and administrative matters. Tmstee Colette Machado has responsibihty over ah federal and state legislation, ongoing programs in heahh, housing, education, land, the Native Hawahan Revolving Loan Fund, and then some. Tliese two committees were not created to foster efhciency, but to concentrate power. The consequence of tliis is that the two committees' chairs have too mueh on their plate and are clearly overwhelmed. For example, the money committee only meets onee or twice to hear updates from our money managers. Under the hve-committee stmcture, the money committee chair actuahy had the hme to take our budget out to the commimity for comments and suggestions. Also, our programs committee only meets to discuss legislation and approve grants. Are we just going to eonhnue throwing money at our problems? When are we going to take a leadersliip position on issues such as health and housing and get things done? Our benehciaries deserve better. Developing good programs won't be quick or easy, but they whl do mueh more to serve the needs of our benehciaries over the long haul. Setting priorities and developing a plan to meet those priorities is desperately needed at OHA. This should be our goal for 2009, despite the fact that the Chairperson used her Investiture speech to preach doom and gloom and even managed to take credit for the establishment of Kuleana Land property tax breaks on O'ahu, the Big Island and Kaua'i, wliieh she had nothing to do with. I pray, that the New Year wih bring constructive and meaningful change, even though the Board remains unchanged after the November eleehon. It is my hope that we will no longer focused on political paybacks and to get down to work. Aloha Ke Akua. For more infonnation on important Hawaiian issues, eheek out Trustee Akana's web site at rowenaakana.org. ^

Rdwūūū Akana TrustEE, At-largE