Comm No 0035.18 - Testimony - CA-18 - PONC Maintenance fund

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Doug Sensenig 10 Waimea, HI 96743 Testimony before the Charter Commission March 8, 2019 Re: CA18, CA27 I'rn Doug Sensenig of Waimea. I am a former attorney and have been involved in land conservation since the late 1980's. As an attorney, I drafted conservation easements and afterward served as a board chair and executive director of Coastal Mountains Land Trust in Maine and as executive director of Hawaii Island Land Trust until its merger with the land trusts on Maui, Oahu and Kauai in 2011. I'm here to urge you to approve CA -18 because it improves the operation of the 2% land fund so it can implement the mandate of the voters. There have clearly been bottlenecks in the process, and CA -18 should remedy them. As to CA -27, I urge you to reject the amendment referring to the use of eminent domain using 2% land funds. I say it refers to the use of eminent domain because the proposed language in subsection (h) does not add to or subtract from the powers the County already has. It's redundant and unnecessary. The proposed language does, however, add a discordant note to the Fund that also needs to be considered.. Historically, the federal government has frequently utilized eminent domain, mainly for large infrastructure projects such as dams, airports, military bases, and interstate highways. Large-scale eminent domain has also been used to create national parks and other conservation areas, especially during the Depression when government wanted to move quickly to create jobs. Perhaps the most notorious use of eminent domain for public parkland was in the creation of Shenandoah National Park. The forcible removal of hundreds of families from their homes and farms created bitterness that persists to this day. Eminent domain was further discredited when it was used in recent decades by governments to take private land and then turn it over to private developers (Kelo v. City of New London.) Eminent domain is therefore a tool that should be used rarely and carefully. A parallel method of preserving land emerged in the United States emerged in the latei800's that was based on the concept of willing landowners working with nonprofits to jointly preserve land. The Trustees of Reservations in Massachusetts is the oldest land trust in the world and an exemplar of the concept of land conservation being a community good and community responsibility that requires participation by as many citizens as possible. In Hawaii it's nothing new and we all know it as kuleana. Comm. No. 35.18