Ceded lands

From dKosopedia

Ceded lands, or public trust lands were given or ceded to the United States shortly after the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. The ceded lands make up about 1.8 million acres, or about 43 percent of the land in Hawaii. They were given or ceded to the United States shortly after the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom.

Upon statehood, Hawaii became trustee for about 1.4 million acres.

The statehood act set aside five purposes for their use, one of them being the betterment of native Hawaiians. The 1978 Hawaii State Constitutional Convention proposed ammendments to create the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and to fund most of it with ceded land revenue.

In 1980 the Legislature set that share at 20 percent.

A 1990 state law that calculated those payments was ruled moot by the Hawaii State Supreme Court in September 2001.

In an article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin dated July 9, 2005 and entitled, OHA seeks high-court action on ceded lands, comes the following excert:

Under the state Constitution, OHA must get a percentage of the revenues from the former monarchy lands held in trust by the state government.

The legislative and executive branches reached a 1990 settlement agreement that resulted in Act 304, by which OHA would get 20 percent of ceded-lands revenues.

But the Hawaii Supreme Court invalidated Act 304 in September 2001, saying it conflicted with federal law prohibiting the state, which receives federal grant moneys, from diverting airport revenues for non-airport uses.</p>

The state initially argued that the payments to OHA were for rent and did not violate federal laws. But in the summer of 1997, the state agreed to the language in a federal omnibus appropriations bill that said any future payments of airport revenues would be illegal under federal law, in exchange for "forgiveness" of past payments totaling $28 million. It was called the Forgiveness Act, which was passed later that year.

OHA sued the state in July 2003, saying the state should never have agreed to the Forgiveness Act because it breached both the 1990 agreement and its duties owed to OHA under the ceded-lands trust.

The fact that the statute was invalidated means OHA cannot get ceded-lands revenue under the statute, said former Associate Justice Robert Klein, one of three attorneys representing OHA.

Because the state wrongfully invalidated the statute by the actions of the state, "OHA should be able to get damages from the state based on that statute as if it existed today," he said. "But for the state's wrongful conduct, we would have that revenue source."

Deputy Attorney General Dorothy Sellers argued that the state did not have a conflict of interest when it agreed to the Forgiveness Act, because it was representing all five purposes of the trust, including the betterment of native Hawaiians. The only way OHA can sue for damages is if the state's actions violated its duty to manage and dispose of trust assets, she said.

OHA stopped getting payments after Act 304 was invalidated, and it was not until January 2003, shortly after she took office, that Gov. Linda Lingle resumed some payments on an agreement.

OHA continues to receive funding from sources other than the airport fees -- about $9 million to $10 million a year, Sellers said. "Eventually there will have to be a new law, but there isn't one, so we're paying them under an old, invalid law as best we can." [1]