Suit seeks to void approvals for Honua'ula

Group says recessed meetings illegally

The Maui News
March 6, 2008
By CHRIS HAMILTON, Staff Writer

WAILUKU - A group of South Maui residents sued the Maui County Council on Wednesday to void its approvals of the controversial Honua'ula housing development, claiming council members violated the state's public meeting law.

The 1,400-unit, roughly $800 million development awaits second and final reading by the council after councilors passed rezoning measures for the controversial project on first reading on Feb. 14.

But Wailuku attorney Lance Collins filed a lawsuit in 2nd Circuit Court requesting a hearing and an injunction to prevent final action by council.

Collins said his clients, Daniel Kanahele, Warren Blum, Lisa Buchanan, James Conniff and Cambria Moss, all of Kihei, have been outspoken critics of the project and followed it closely for years.

However, in the last year, they were denied their rights a number of times under the Hawaii Sunshine Act when the council and its Land Use Committee recessed meetings in order to avoid taking public testimony, Collins said.

As a matter of practice, the council regularly recesses discussions for up to six days in order to not have to restart a meeting. Once the council or committee chairperson begins a meeting anew, the public is given an opportunity to speak.

With Honua'ula, that meant council members frequently had to listen to dozens of speakers with little time remaining during a meeting to conduct business.

Collins said the state Office of Information Practices only allows for public meetings to be recessed if a decision is pending at the next meeting. Elected officials cannot recess, reconvene and take up new issues, motions and discussions, Collins argued.

Deputy Corporation Counsel Mary Blaine Johnston said the department received the lawsuit Wednesday. "All I can say is that we will respond," she said.

On Wednesday, Honua'ula owners' representative Charlie Jencks said he didn't know when Council Chairman Riki Hokama, who voted against the project, would schedule the final vote.

"From my standpoint, it certainly is disappointing that people would do this in light of the fact that this is the first project to really provide some affordable housing in Maui," Jencks said. "It's a sad day, but they're going to do what they're going to do."

Plans for the Honua'ula project call for building 700 luxury and 700 affordable homes as well as a golf course and 90 acres of parks and open space. Proponents say it would be the first development to fulfill the county's new affordable housing ordinance, which requires all new housing developments to be at least 40 percent affordable by federal income guidelines. It should also provide construction jobs for up to 20 years.

Honua'ula's developers face another potential legal threat - opponents say the development will destroy pristine landscape and culturally and environmentally significant areas. On Feb. 2, Maui Tomorrow and the community organization's Honolulu attorney, Pam Bunn, called on the Maui Planning Commission to order a supplemental environmental impact statement for Honua'ula. The last such environmental study for the project was approved in 1989, and plans have changed considerably since then.

Many of the arguments - on both sides of Honua'ula - were often repeated during council meetings on the project. However, in the final days, council members took up numerous new conditions and amendments, such as whether the developer should be responsible for an expensive sewage treatment line or new scientific surveys.

If successful, the lawsuit filed Wednesday also would void the County Land Use Committee's Nov. 20 vote in favor of the project. Collins and his clients also accuse council members of violating the Sunshine Act by passing among themselves position memos on proposed motions.

The exchanged memos amount to holding meetings in secret, Collins said. In addition, he contends that some of the recessed meetings were not given adequate public notice.

"These five people attended most of the meetings and have been involved all along," Collins said. "They felt excluded by this whole process."

But Jencks said that by his notes, the public was given 11 opportunities to speak for or against the project in the last year or so. And they used all those chances, he said.