WAILUKU — The Department of Land and Natural Resources is sticking to its position that weddings — just like any other commercial operations — need a right-of-entry permit if they are going to use unencumbered state land.

Although beach weddings are a hot-button issue, state Board of Land and Natural Resources Chairwoman Laura Thielen said the apparent push on that topic just happened to coincide with a more general DLNR drive to regularize and publicize its rules — and to educate the public about why it has them.

She visited Maui on Wednesday for a public hearing on fishing regulations, also a touchy topic.

The drive to clarify DLNR's rules goes back to when Peter Young was chairman. Thielen said she worked closely with him when she was at the Office of Planning and was familiar with some of the issues before she took the chair after Young was forced out under complaints from an unhappy Legislature last year.

Over many years, she said, DLNR had accumulated rules and policies and "gentlemen's agreements" that differed from division to division and sometimes from place to place even within the same division.

"People had different understandings of the origins and meanings of these agreements," she said.

And there was one agreement that was settled out of court, in 2001, when wedding coordinator Sandy Barker asserted a First Amendment right to set up weddings on public beaches.

Thielen said that the settlement agreement did not prevent the state from "changing the law," which it did in 2002. However, since then, she said, the wedding business has grown a lot and some new operators didn't understand the right-of-entry process.

Some operators sought permits; some didn't. The ones who did so overwhelmed the Maui land agent that he was spending all his time processing wedding permits. He asked to have the task shifted to the Oahu offices, and the worms escaped the can.

Jim Fosbinder, the lawyer who negotiated the 2001 agreement, said DLNR couldn't back out. According to Thielen, state lawyers say it can.

Wednesday afternoon, Fosbinder said if that's the case, the wedding business may want to litigate it again. "I'm willing to do that."

At the moment, DLNR is requiring permits and trying to clarify its position. There are a number of exceptions and special situations, but in general "if you're standing in sand, it's probably state land and you need a permit," she said.

Kaanapali Beach is administered separately, by the DLNR Department of Boating and Ocean Recreation, and state parks are also managed separately.

Thielen said DLNR hopes to have an online permit system up and running within about three months. Some wedding operators are asking for annual permits with individual reservations, and Thielen said that is a possibility.

Weddings are not the only issue, she said. Molokini permits have been another.

Thielen got two important laws in this year's session of the Legislature that should help DLNR enforce its rules.

One makes renewals subject to a permittee's being in compliance with all DLNR permits. That means, for example, that a dive business with a Molokini permit and a Maalaea harbor slip permit might lose both if it caused trouble with just one.

This can also be used as a whip to get permittees to ensure that their customers understand what they are not allowed to do, and to police them.

She is putting her hopes in better public outreach and education because she believes many permittees share the department's resource conservation goals, or would if they knew what they were.

She points out that DLNR was set up to encourage land and water development when economic growth was a prime goal. "In recent years," she said, "that has shifted toward stewardship of resources."

That applies equally to users of public resources who don't have to get permits, notably fishermen.

Although Thielen wants to see the untidy bush of DLNR rules, regulations and interpretations pruned to a manageable shape, she said, that does not mean that all islands have to be run exactly the same.

She gave as an example the attempt to manage collection of reef fish for the aquarium trade. The Big Island has been using shifting no-take zones to give areas a rest. Thielen said she does not think the three islands of Maui County favor that approach.

She said there is an internal push to get different divisions to consult with one another so that regulations desired by one branch are practically enforceable by DOCARE.

Bag limits are an example. Fisheries managers might favor different limits for different islands, but enforcement officers in the field might ask how they would prove that a cooler full of fish came from one island and not another.

Thielen said enforcement has increased because appropriations have risen "dramatically" in the past five years, after five years of no increases in resources for DOCARE, although the across-the-board 4 percent budget cut ordered by the governor will affect that.

One thing that has not changed is the land board's priorities for use of public land: protecting resources first, residential recreational uses second and commercial uses last.

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