Two Native Hawaiian leaders have joined with Hawaiian activists in calling for state lawmakers to delay passing an agreement that transfers $200 million of land and cash to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Robin Danner, president and chief executive officer of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, and Colin Kippen, executive director of the Native Hawaiian Education Council, said they want more information to be gathered before the settlement is adopted. That probably would mean putting off a decision at least until next year's Legislature convenes in January 2009.

Late yesterday, the Sovereign Councils of the Hawaiian Homelands Assembly also weighed in on the subject. The organization, formerly known as the State Council of Hawaiian Homestead Association, issued a statement saying it "strongly opposes" the agreement reached between OHA and the Lingle administration. The statement said homestead association presidents gathered Saturday to discuss the issue and voted unanimously to oppose the agreement. The group echoed the arguments made by Danner and Kippen.

Meanwhile, a poll conducted on OHA's behalf shows 55 percent of Hawai'i residents believe the Legislature should approve the settlement agreement while 72 percent of Native Hawaiians polled believe it should be passed.

The proposed settlement is meant to resolve a 30-year dispute between Native Hawaiians and the state over who gets the income from land once owned by the Kingdom of Hawai'i.

Under the terms of the agreement, OHA gets three parcels of land worth $187 million, $13 million in cash and a minimum annual payment of another $15.1 million. In exchange, OHA agrees to waive further claims to income from the so-called ceded lands from 1978 onward.

OHA and the Lingle administration have lobbied hard to get the settlement passed in this session of the Legislature, pointing out that the proposed agreement took more than four years of meetings to work out.

Danner and Kippen, who are usually allied with OHA on major issues, including their support for the Akaka bill for Native Hawaiian recognition, say they are not convinced this settlement is the best OHA could get.

"I think it's a significant decision, one that warrants us to pause — not just the Hawaiian community, but the Legislature, the state government," Danner said.

Kippen, who stressed he is speaking for himself and not his organization, said, "I'm opposed to this bill basically ... because it gives up too much for too little in a way that is unfair to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries."

COMMITTEES MEET TODAY

OHA Administrator Clyde Namu'o and Attorney General Mark Bennett say the agreement is fair and beneficial to both sides and should be adopted.

Three committees of the state Senate meet in the state Capitol auditorium at 2:45 p.m. today to consider House Bill 266, the latest version of the negotiated settlement. The Legislature must approve the deal for it to become binding.

The $200 million offered in the settlement is presumed to represent the revenue generated by the ceded lands and owed, but not paid, to OHA by the state between 1978 and now.

The ceded lands are made up of 1.2 million acres, or about 40 percent of the total land in Hawai'i and about 95 percent of state-controlled lands, according to OHA.

A number of Hawaiians continue to believe that language in the settlement suggests the agreement could be interpreted to relinquish all future claims by anyone regarding ownership of the ceded lands.

The House draft of the bill contains language that is supposed to address that concern.

Kippen, a former senior counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, former OHA deputy director and tribal judge for Indian tribes, cited language in the agreement that "waives claims of any kind" related to "income, proceeds, or any other tangible right."

That could be broadly interpreted by a judge to mean the agreement settles all claims by Hawaiians to ceded lands, not just any revenues derived from them, he said.

"The ambiguities that are in that document are in that document forever. That language is as broad as it gets and OHA agreed to it," Kippen said.

Bennett however, insists that the agreement settles only the issue of revenues.

"It talks about income and proceeds and that's what it's intended to do. That is what it is intended to deal with," Bennett said. "For people who are saying this bars other claims, there's no language to support that."

CLARIFICATION PROMISED

OHA's Namu'o said language in the House bill clarifies that point, and added that Bennett has agreed to go even further to clarify any ambiguity.

"Mark is going to go on the record and will offer language to be included in the committee report that essentially says this waiver does not extinguish any claims which the Hawaiians have to ceded lands," Namu'o said.

Said Bennett: "It's certainly possible that on particular language with the settlement agreement, we may work on modifying it with OHA."

But even without the ambiguity, Kippen believes the agreement gives up too much.

"Ceded lands are from the top of the mountains ... to the submerged lands (in the sea)," Kippen said. "So let's say tomorrow ... somebody finds that there's this certain kind of limu that holds the cure to cancer or Alzheimer's, and the state now says, 'Those are growing on our ceded land, we want to sell those items, we want to make money on that.' "

Hawaiians would not be able to get a share of that money because it would be income that goes to the state, Kippen said.

Danner, head of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, said OHA and the administration of Gov. Linda Lingle have done a good job in getting the agreement to this point. However, she said, it's now up to the Legislature to take the time to make sure it is done right.

Danner said she wants the state and OHA to work on completing an inventory of all ceded lands before the agreement is finalized, a process that likely would take at least until next year.

"We'll all still be here next year," Danner said. "I don't think you sell the items in your house before you take an inventory of the items."

Namu'o, however, said that is an irrelevant point. While it's true that OHA has not received a detailed inventory of the entire 1.2 million acres of ceded lands, it does have an inventory of all income-generation lands in that category, he said.

IS $200 MILLION ENOUGH?

Activist Mililani Trask, a former OHA trustee, said that since the Supreme Court's Rice v. Cayetano decision allowed for non-Hawaiians to be elected to the OHA board, its actions have been suspect.

While she supports the concept of an agreement, Trask said, she still has too many questions about the current version.

Trask echoed the concern of many that the $200 million amounts to too little. "We haven't been told what the $200 million is based on," she said. "How is that calculated?"

A judge in 1996 said that Hawaiians were owed $1.2 billion or more for revenues derived.

Namu'o, however, said that billion-dollar-plus figure was based on accumulated interest and a later court ruled that Hawaiians were not entitled to interest, only revenues themselves.

The values assigned to each of the three parcels selected to be handed over to OHA are based on assessed values issued by tax offices of the individual counties.

Trask said there needs to be further study. "I want to know what the environmental studies are on them (the parcels)," she said. "I think they're short-changing the people."

Andre Perez of the umbrella activist group Hui Pu, said he objects to the way the agreement was handed down without any consultation with beneficiaries.

"The constituents and beneficiaries only found out about this agreement after it had been submitted to the Legislature," Perez said. "And now we're going to tell you what we're going to do for you. It's a very condescending and paternalistic attitude."

Danner said the series of meetings OHA has held in recent weeks across the Islands is just a starting point. "There are informational meetings and then there are consultations," she said. "I just feel like we've got the cart before the horse."

OHA POINTS TO POLL

While the specter of "establishment" Hawaiians like Danner and Kippen standing side by side with activists like Trask and Perez presents a formidable opposition, OHA is countering with the poll numbers that appear to show a majority of the public, and Native Hawaiians in particular, favor the proposed settlement.

Results showed 55 percent of those polled answering "yes" to the question "Do you believe the Legislature should approve the proposed settlement?" Only 26 percent of all respondents said "no" while 19 percent said they did not know.

Among Hawaiians, 72 percent said "yes," 20 percent said "no," and 9 percent did not know.

Asked how they felt about the agreement, 28 percent of total respondents and 27 percent of Native Hawaiians said the settlement is a good one, while 34 percent of all respondents and 62 percent of Hawaiians believed the package is too little for what OHA is owed. Only 22 percent of all respondents and 4 percent of Hawaiians said the settlement is too much.

Conducted by Ward Research Feb. 15-26, the poll queried 500 people, 100 of them Native Hawaiian. The number of people polled allows a margin of error of 4.4 percent for the total population polled and 9.8 percent for Native Hawaiians.

Perez said the poll didn't survey enough people to form an accurate gauge of how the public, and Native Hawaiians, feel about the settlement.

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com.