COM 0045.030 2002-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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On October 20, 2003, the Hawaii State Supreme Court issued a significant ruling in Save Sunset Beach Coalition; Life of the Land; Larry McElheny; Benjamin Hopkins; and Peter Cole vs. City and County of Honolulu; Obayashi Corporation; and Obayashi Hawaii Corporation. A copy of the opinion has been transmitted under separate cover. The Supreme Court opined: Read as a whole, Article III, Section 3 calls for future action to be taken by the legislature. The first sentence of section 3 sets out a mandate with respect to the preservation of agricultural lands. The text then imposes a duty on the legislature to `provide standards and criteria to accomplish the foregoing [mandate].' The directive to "provide standards and criteria' indicates a duty arising on the effective date of the provision. Indeed, Plaintiffs concede the duty to provide such standards relates to future action. Because the provision calls for future action it negates the inference that any standards then in existence were incorporated by the amendment. The last sentence of Section 3 confirms that the identification of important lands was to follow the adoption by the legislature of such standards. According to that sentence, such identification was necessary "to fulfill the purposes [described] above[.]" Plainly this means the "standard and criteria" in the second sentence were to be adopted by the legislature after the amendment became effective. In other words, the Supreme Court concluded that the State Legislature, not the counties, is responsible for adopting standards and criteria to identify important agricultural lands. Consequently, it is inappropriate for the General Plan to identify 'important agricultural lands.' It complicates and misleads. Draft 2 recommends the related Land Use objective and Agriculture policy as follows: When identified by the State, protect and encourage the utilization of the County's important agricultural lands. • Establish and implement a comprehensive important agricultural lands program to address at the minimum agricultural water development rezoning criteria infrastructure standards labor housing government incentives new approaches to preservation enforcement and minimizing potential adjacent land use conflicts. The existing Intensive and Extensive Agricultural Designations on the General Plan Land Use Pattern Allocation Guide (LUPAG) map reflect past and present activities of agriculture using soils, climate, and topography, productivity ratings as a basis. While these designations serve to describe the soil potential for certain agricultural activity, 13