2018 General Election Candidates

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Name on ballot:

WAIHEE, John D., IV

Running for:

OHA trustee

District (if applicable):

At-Large

Political party:

Democrat

Campaign website:

N/A

Current occupation:

Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee At-Large

Age:

Previous job history:

Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee At-Large

Previous elected office, if any:

Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee At-Large

What qualifies you to represent the people of Hawaii?

I believe that being involved in managing the Native Hawaiian Trust Fund for the past 18 years has given me the skills to prudently invest the trust assets. The time I spent as the Chairman of the Committee on Beneficiary Advocacy and Empowerment has also taught me how to affect Public Policy and produced several of OHA’s most successful Legislative sessions in terms of Board initiatives signed into law.

What are the top three challenges facing the voters you seek to represent?

I’d say access to housing, employment, and health care, are the top three challenges facing our beneficiaries as those are essential for any community to thrive. I believe, however, that with OHA set to create a new Strategic Plan, we should prioritize our strategic results by surveying the broadest possible spectrum of the Native Hawaiian community and develop them based on what the most pressing needs are shown to be.

If elected, what will be your highest legislative priority?

My highest legislative priority would be fulfilling the State’s Public Land Trust revenue obligations to Native Hawaiians. By law, OHA is entitled to 20% of all funds derived from the public land trust. The State’s own reports, using historically undisputed revenue streams, show that they generated an average of $158,077,656 annually in PLT revenues in the last 3 fiscal years, 20% of which is $31,615,531. That is more than double the $15.1 million that OHA is capped at receiving. At the very least, the State should remove the cap until the issue can be resolved by OHA and the state.

If elected, what can you do to improve the lives of your constituents?

First, I would advocate for OHA to prioritize the issues of housing, employment, and health care (in that order) into our Strategic Plan and target our grants to nonprofit agencies that serve those objectives. Secondly, I would have OHA advocate for public programs to address these issues in Hawaiian communities at the State level. And finally, I would have OHA partner with other State agencies to address those issues using some of our own resources as an incentive. It’s going to need to be a group effort.

Is there anything else you would like voters to know about you?

Whether by chance or design we live in a system that has a way of playing divide and conquer with the Hawaiian community. While the recent audit of OHA brought many of the agency’s short-comings to the forefront, it’s important to realize that it also had its share of misrepresentations. From listing some Trustee Allowance expenditures twice to pad their results, to labelling money provided to fellow Government agencies as ‘Non-Competitive “Grant(s)”’ (despite the fact that money moved between state agencies is exempt from procurement under the State’s own laws), it was clear that the auditors had an agenda to portray OHA in the worst possible light. Unfortunately, many within the agency and our community reacted to it by vilifying and attacking one another based on personal feelings. The fact is, we will only be able to fix the problems at OHA by working together to identify and address them rationally through policies and our next Strategic Plan. As your Trustee, I have always striven to administer in the best interest of my beneficiaries with logic and prudence and will continue to do so if reelected.