Musings: Same Old New Bosses

Brilliant stars filled large patches of the night sky, offering a celestialscape that’s been decidedly rare in these months of wet weather, but it, too, soon succumbed to the thick clouds that delivered rain up until the crack of dawn, when Koko and I went walking on streets that glistened in the flashing orange lights of the garbage truck.

The wind was chill, making me glad for long pants and a sweatshirt, and it gusted through the trees, spattering us with large drops that mixed with a fresh new shower and sent us heading quickly for home.

Koko is not fond of getting wet, unlike, I’m assuming from its breed name only, the Portuguese water dog that has taken up residence at the White House. I’m sure it was just a bit of media hyperbole that prompted this caption on a Yahoo slide show of the pup last night:

The news all Washington is bracing for will break on Tuesday -- the debut of the new White House dog Bo.

Despite all the talk about getting a shelter dog, the First Family ended up with a purebred from a breeder that is likely, given Americans’ penchant for copycat behavior, to spawn a run on Portuguese water dogs, as happens every time a particular breed gains celebrity. And since they tend to be hyper, with coats that are hard to maintain, it’s likely a good many of them will end up in shelters months or years down the road, where they’ll add to the legions of unwanted dogs that are euthanized.

The dog, just six months old, is now in its third home, having passed through what appears to be a highly contrived scheme to give it the appearance of a “rescue dog.”

Bo reportedly was adopted from Texas breeder Martha Stern by someone who then “gave it up” and from there it went to Sen. Ted Kennedy’s trainer, who kept it for a month before the Senator presented the dog as a gift to the Obama girls. Uh huh. Likely story. Who thinks this stuff up?

It's too bad they didn't adopt a shelter dog, because the actions of the Obamas bear a lot of weight. Just consider the shuddering reaction from the chem ag MidAmerica CropLife Assn. to the organic garden.

But organic gardens aside, Noam Chomsky pretty much summed it up in a Democracy Now! yesterday when he said:

As far as policy is concerned, unless [Obama] is under a lot of pressure from activist sectors, he’s not going to go beyond what he’s presented himself as in actual policy statements or cabinet choices and so on: a centrist Democrat [who’s] going to basically continue Bush’s polices, maybe in a more modulated way,” says Chomsky.

In other words, he’ll close down Guantanamo and the secret CIA black sites — while still allowing the agency to retain the power to detain suspects "on a short-term transitory basis."

You know, just long enough to get them to a black site operated by somebody else.

Meanwhile, it seems there’s another side to the piracy story, one that tells of Western nations poaching in Somali fishing grounds and dumping barrels of nuclear and toxic waste off the coast there. Nevertheless, Obama is promising not a full investigation, but a crack down only on the Somali rogues, with some war mongers even calling for a land invasion.

As my accountant observed yesterday, noting the prescient quality of so much music from the ‘60s: “meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

That holds true for our planning department, too, where Ian Costa, the junk old boss, was chosen to continue on as the junk new boss by a mayor identified, in what can only be described as a Freudian slip by KONG DJ Ron Wiley, as Bryan Carvalho.

It seems the County Council, like the rest of us that aren’t brain dead, is wondering why the department has failed to do so many of the planning projects it’s supposed to do, while remaining largely unaccountable for its actions.

Well, at least some on the Council were wondering. According to The Garden Island Darryl Kaneshiro “tried to rein in the line of questioning,” while Planning Committee Chair Jay Furfaro urged the others “to trust him in his new position, saying he has had conversations with Costa about setting realistic and attainable deadlines for the reports.”

Ummm, shouldn’t “Bryan” Carvalho be having those kinds of conversations with his appointee? (Clarification: As Andy Parx helpfully pointed out, technically, the Planning Commission appoints the director.)

Former Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura, who certainly would have axed Ian if she’d been elected mayor, was sufficiently disturbed to show up at the Council and complain:

“The planning process in the director’s head is extremely worrisome. ... We are treading in very dangerous waters,” Yukimura said. “It’s important to have good plans in place and regulations to back up the plans. If regulations mean a draft ordinance, that’s fine. ... Otherwise it’s a constant ‘I need more money’ and you’re never where you need to be.”

But JoAnn, you don’t understand. When it comes to planning on Kauai, it’s not about needs, it’s about wants, and the planning department, under Ian, is exactly where it wants to be. And that's in bed with big landowners like Grove Farm and the other developers who benefit from having all the long range planning and updates left undone.

In short, we're looking at a continuation of the same old planning policies set by the last two do-nothing administrations — Kusaka and Baptiste — which is what happens when you keep the old bosses instead of finding someone new.

Musings: Fooled Again

It occurred to me, as I stood in the starry darkness, watching a crescent moon consort with Venus, that the anti-GMO movement in Hawaii is not unlike the “war on terror.” Under the guise of fighting an enemy, we're being pumped with fear so our Constitutional rights can be stripped away.

Except the folks who want to permit warrantless property searches, convictions without proof, are supposedly “progressives.” I laughed aloud at the irony and a Newell's shearwater — first of the season, flying overhead — laughed, too. 

Gee, the old Who song — “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” – is still appropos today. Except instead of brown shirts, or black shirts, they're wearing yellow, and red. Shucks. Looks like we did get fooled again.

So who is backing the decidedly regressive charter amendment that would establish an all-powerful environment czar answerable to no citizen, with broad authority to trample civil rights, ban a wide range of commercial and governmental activities?

Well, Makana, making like a farmer in his spanking new overalls. And Councilman Gary Hooser, whose goal from the beginning was to pass a “mellow” ordinance — Bill 2491/Ordinance 960 — as a lead up to “the next step:” ramming through a Draconian charter amendment.

Then there's Wai Koa Plantation — the tree farm that is helping 1%'er Bill Porter dodge property taxes while he waits to sell all his ag CPRs behind Kilauea mini-golf — and Kauai Fresh Farms, the hydroponic lettuce grower it subsidizes.

We've also got the Vandana Shiva-backed Friends of Navdana, which discloses little about its activities, and SHAKA, the realtor-backed movement from Maui. And then there's the pro-2491 contingent: GMO Free Kauai, Ohana O Kauai and Surfrider, which has sadly aligned with Kauai Rising to support “rights of nature” initiatives intended to promote a “new island order” characterized primarily by litigation. Mmm, isn't that the old island order?  

Kauai Rising is the creation of Michael Shooltz, a retired East Coast banker who is also worried about smart meters and chem trails, which is how I happened upon the Kauai Sky blog, which lists the supposed health impacts of chem trails:

Aching joints, acute gastrointestinal ailments, adult onset asthma, autism, excruciating headaches fungal infections, heart problems, inability to concentrate, lower body temperatures, nosebleeds, pneumonia, sore necks [from looking up at the chem trails?], sudden extreme fatigue, twitching eyelids, upper respiratory ailments and vertigo.

And I thought, gee, those are awfully similar to the symptoms attributed to smart meter exposure:

Headaches, weakness, sleep disturbance, emotional instability, dizziness, memory impairment, fatigue, and heart palpitations.

As well as pesticide exposure, according to the alarmist new Surfrider pesticide brochure that helpfully directs folks who suspect they've been dosed with drift to call Earthjustice and join a lawsuit:

Flu-like symptoms, spacey, drunk, hungover, nauseous, low energy, asthma, allergies, diarrhea, headaches, itchy eyes, irregular periods, nosebleeds, irregular heartbeat, forgetfulness, scratchy throat, skin rash, leaky gut syndrome, cancer, early puberty, miscarriages, birth defects, ADD/ADHD, OD [?], gout, obesity.

So how do you finger just one culprit?

But getting back to Michael Shooltz, it was this piece that made the movement's strategy so clear:

In spite of the illusions of complexity presented by our corrupt, elitist system, the solution to the poisoning of Kauai is in reality quite simple. We the People just say "No", this poisoning will no longer be allowed on our island. Period. Later we can dance through laws, or lawsuits, or whatever spasms the dying System tries to foist upon us.

In other words, it really doesn't matter, as Gary has said from the start, whether the law is ever enforced, or whether you pass a bill or a charter amendment that is just, reasonable or defensible in a  court of law.

It's all about wishful thinking, getting your way, throwing tantrums, saying no. Kind of like a two-year-old.

Hey, I believe the System is dying, too, and that we desperately need change, fresh ideas, new solutions. But I don't wanna replace one crappy regime with another, which is why I haven't been able to muster an appetite for the anti-GMO movement, despite my deep concerns about pesticide use and many aspects of biotech.

Because the only thing on its menu is the same old power and control entree served up daily by the existing patriarchal system.

Which brings me back to that Who song:

The change, it had to come

We knew it all along

We were liberated from the fold, that's all

And the world looks just the same

And history ain't changed

'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war

I'll move myself and my family aside

If we happen to be left half alive

I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky

Though I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

There's nothing in the streets

Looks any different to me

And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye

And the parting on the left

Are now parting on the right

And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I'll get on my knees and pray

We don't get fooled again

Don't get fooled again

No, no!

Musings: End of an Era?

After yesterday’s delightfully drenching downpours, Koko and I headed out beneath a smattering of stars and that brilliant beacon, Venus. The brightening sky was streaked with gray and stained with scarlet, and the ground had that smooshy feel that follows a good soaking rain.

We were on our way back when we ran into my neighbor Andy, who asked: “Did you hear Mubarak resigned?”

I hadn’t. But as I told Andy, it’s amazing that it took the U.S. this long to pressure its puppet into stepping down, considering the kind of economic influence we have over that nation. I recently read a piece on ProPublic.org that stated:

Egypt gets the most U.S. foreign aid of any country except for Israel. (This doesn't include the money spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.) The amount varies each year and there are many different funding streams, but U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt has averaged just over $2 billion every year since 1979, when Egypt struck a peace treaty with Israel following the Camp David Peace Accords, according to a Congressional Research Service report from 2009.
That average includes both military and economic assistance, though the latter has been in decline since 1998, according to CRS.

Wow. That’s a lot of dough. Just think of how many social programs in America could be boosted with that sort of annual infusion. But don’t worry, we — or rather, Israel — get something in return. As the article continued, citing a 2009 U.S. embassy cable recently released by WikiLeaks:

President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as "untouchable compensation" for making and maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace.

As the article noted, the aid is given ”without conditions,” in terms of human rights. And despite our rhetoric about wanting to bring democracy to Egypt, or anywhere else for that matter, even Mubarak was “deeply skeptical of the US role in democracy promotion” and U.S. funding is limited to NGOs registered with the government, which excludes most human rights organizations.

So the people have risen up and thrown the bum out on what is, interestingly, the 32nd anniversary of the fall of another American puppet, the shah of Iran.

The crowds are celebrating and jubilant, justifiably heady with a feeling of liberation and victory after overcoming the fear barrier and taking to the streets for 18 days of unprecedented mass protests.

But with Mubarak handing control over to the military — a breach of the Egyptian constitution, which specifies the speaker of parliament should take over — and the U.S anxious to re-assert its power and influence in the region, it remains unclear whether this is truly the end of an era, or merely another "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" American-orchestrated transition.

Musings: Meet the New Boss

Well, it’s Barack Obama’s big day.



I didn’t get up to watch the inauguration because I don’t have a TV, and at the risk of sounding like a bad American, I really don’t much care. Pomp and circumstance don’t mean anything to me.

Still, it's great to see people all excited about our new Prez. Heck, even the movie stars are feeling inspired, according to an Associated Press report on the Oprah Winfrey show, which yesterday featured a “surprise appearance” by Joe and Jill Biden, where she revealed that Obama had offered her husband his pick of VP or Secretary of State:

Winfrey also interviewed movie star couple Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher about how Obama has inspired them to pledge to help end slave labor around the world and encourage other people to make a pledge to improve their communities. Other celebrities, including Scarlett Johansson, Justin Timberlake and Forest Whitaker appeared by videotape to talk about what Obama's election means to them.

Wow, I can’t think of anything more intriguing. Yawn. But a friend who happened on yesterday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Day celebration at Kukui Grove said she was touched by a poem that an African-American teenaged boy had written around the “I have a dream” theme. It included the dream of being able to walk into a mall without being shadowed by security guards, and ended with how he had achieved his dream of seeing a black man elected to the nation’s highest office, which gave him hope for his own future.

Web coverage of the inauguration showed Bush to be all smiles, and why wouldn’t he be? He’s walking away without criminal charges from a huge mess, as an AP story on Obama’s speech underscored:

With 11 million Americans out of work and trillions of dollars lost in the stock market's tumble, Obama emphasized that his biggest challenge is to repair the tattered economy left behind by outgoing President George W. Bush.

"Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed," Obama said in an undisguised shot at Bush administration policies. "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin the work of remaking America."

And today, it seems, is not a moment too soon. As AFP reports, citing a recent Gallup poll:

“The number of Americans who say their lives are a struggle climbed steeply last year from less than half the population to nearly six in 10 people…

Some are jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, with nytimes.com reporting that military enlistments are way up in this dreary economy:

The last fiscal year was a banner one for the military, with all active-duty and reserve forces meeting or exceeding their recruitment goals for the first time since 2004, the year that violence in Iraq intensified drastically, Pentagon officials said.

Yup, the rich get multibillion dollar bailouts and the poor get shot up and/or traumatized fighting imperialist wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. What a great plan! Don’t you just love America?

Of course, America ain’t the only place that’s hurting. AFP is also reporting that Australia’s economy is heading for a “scarily fast” fall:

"This is not just a recession. This is the sharpest deceleration Australia's economy has ever seen," the Access Economics think-tank said in its quarterly business outlook.

China's booming demand for mining resources such as coal and iron ore have driven years of good growth but the slowdown in the Asian giant's economy has revealed Australia's vulnerability, it noted.

"China's slowdown is Australia's recession," the forecaster said.

And yes, even mighty China is slowing, with AFP reporting that folks from China to Singapore are toning down their Year of the Ox celebrations.

It might be a tiny bit of an overstatement to blame all the world’s woes on the Bush-Cheney team, but as Maui’s Dick Mayer noted in an email, today does indeed mark “The End of an Error.”

As for Obama, I’m not expecting miracles. Shoots, I’d be happy if he could merely live up to this part of his inauguration speech:

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

But then, maybe that is wishing for a miracle after all.

Mahalo to LightLine for the cool Obama photo. Ya gotta love a guy who can flash a mean shaka.

Musings: Terrible Words

“Look, Sheila, get one rice cooker,” county planning inspector Patrick Henriques said as he peered through a gap in the drapes that covered a sliding glass door at Councilman Tim Bynum's house.

His boss, planning supervisor Sheila Miyake, looked, too, and saw a refrigerator: “That, to me, is an installed appliance.” Patrick pressed his camera up to the glass and took pictures of the room. Then, spotting a broken window, “I tried to peek through that thing.”

The two county workers were describing their unannounced “exterior inspection” after receiving an “anonymous” complaint that Tim had converted his Wailua Homesteads house into a multi-family dwelling. Their words were caught on tape by First Deputy Prosecutor Jake Delaplane, who was secretly recording their Nov. 30, 2010 conversation.

The two-hour recording — evidence improperly withheld from Tim's defense attorney — was later turned over to Special Attorney General Richard Minatoya, who conducted an independent investigation after Judge Watanabe removed the county prosecutor's office from the case. In May, Minatoya dismissed the misdemeanor charges against Tim and gave the tape to his attorney.

County Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho released the tape yesterday, falsely claiming it “surfaced last week” when Tim sued her, Sheila and the county. Shay also issued a press release claiming the tape showed county attorneys had barred planning inspectors from taking actions against Tim so as to “influence Bynum's vote on Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr's. TVR [transient vacation rental] bill.”

The tape fails to support that allegation because, in fact, no special treatment was needed to gain Tim's vote on the bill, which he introduced and championed.

The tape also fails to help Sheila achieve her stated goal: “I want to be lily white. I want people to say, 'there she goes, Miss Perfect.'”

But it does raise questions about the role of former Council Chair Kaipo Asing, who is bitter enemies with Tim. The tape ends with Sheila endorsing efforts to prosecute Tim, saying, “And poor Kaipo needs justice on this, I think.”

The tape also offers a disturbing look into the planning department under the reign of Director Ian Costa and Deputy Director Imai Aiu, both of whom were due to be replaced the next day by Deputy County Attorney Mike Dahilig and former Planning Director Dee Crowell, respectively.

Sheila describes a planning department where “there's no policies. There's no directives. I make my own directives.” She also bemoans the arrival of “two new bosses tomorrow,” saying, “I only can do, I only have until tomorrow, 12 noon. That's all you have of me. That's all the powers I have. And after 12:01 I lost all powers. The diva is gone.” Near the end of the tape, Sheila characterizes the TVR inspectors as “lazy” and at several points, she talks stink about Dee.

The recording, which begins like a cheesy detective film with the rustle of Jake's pants as walks, already wired, to his meeting with Sheila and Patrick, lays out the dispute between county attorneys and planners over the case.

Sheila repeatedly asserts that she and Patrick had the right to walk around Tim's house, look in his windows and take photographs — Patrick says they “called out,” but didn't knock upon arriving at the residence — because Tim had gotten a use permit to build an addition onto his house. But Sheila also tells Jake “the issue of trespassing came up” — a concern raised by Imai and county attorneys.

Sheila then goes on to describe how county attorneys told her that a rice cooker and refrigerator did not meet the definition of a kitchen under the county zoning ordinance. “They look at it differently and to today it's hard to change our mind...because our director Ian believes in that code that preparation of food is a rice cooker. The planning attorney Ian does not believe that.”

“And neither does Mike,” Jake says, to which Sheila replies, “right.”

Jake repeatedly asks Sheila and Patrick whether county attorneys ever said, “Let's just make it go away.” Sheila replies, “No, not make it go away. They know they can't ask that from me.” Jake then asks whether they were directed to deviate at all from standard procedure, to which Sheila replies she was questioned about why they served Tim with the zoning violation notice at the Council Chambers. She defended her actions, saying, “That's his normal place of employment.”

Sheila and Patrick also say that Tim refused to allow an inspection, claiming he'd done nothing wrong, and instead met with Imai.

As Jake presses for details on whether Sheila believes politics played any part, Sheila claims that Mike “made a comment that stays here and I'm gonna forget it if you ever ask me again. It had to do with politics and that's why Imai had to take it over. I'm never on the stand gonna say that because he is gonna be my boss, and he would never say that on Shaylene, too, yeah, you understand... because our lives...” At that point, Jake, Shay and Patrick all start laughing.

Sheila then chides Patrick for relying on his memory of conversations with Bynum, rather than taking notes. “I should just tape his conversation, illegally,” Patrick says. “And then write it all down,” Sheila adds. Jake, who is secretly taping them, laughs.

Sheila also repeats a conversation with Ian Costa, in which he reportedly says, “I don't care. I'm going to send it to [unintelligble] because Kaipo Asing was asking. Kaipo Asing needs to know. And I gotta answer at that time to the Council Chair. That's what happened.”

“Was it something the Council was asking about?” Jake asks.

“Only Kaipo Asing, as a private citizen,” she replies.

At about the 1:43:00 mark on the tape, Jake begins pressing Sheila for more details — “Was there anything going on, besides the election, that ...coincided with some of the timing of this stuff? Not just general political stuff, but was there something specific going on at that time?”

“It's political,” she replies. “Everything is political.”

“But was there anything with planning going on, any votes?” Jake asks.

“Yes, I said it's political. Yes, yes.”

“So you think that directly influenced...”

“Yes," she says. "I’m never going to say it (unintelligible) because it will be my demise. Not yours, because you weren't there. It will be my demise. Do you need to know about all that?”

Sheila then sends Patrick out of the room and tells Jake, “When Imai took it over, there had to be a delay. … Dahilig said hold it up until after the vote. We need his vote for the TVR. I said, oh, you mean, the TVRs you guys screwed up on? No problem. You saw what happened. My bosses got fired because my new bosses screwed up. This is all off the record. They kind of catered to him because it was their screw up on the TVR.”

At the end, as Sheila and Jake are chatting, she brings up Patrick's assertion that Tim had said, “let make it go away.” (Actually, Patrick had said he heard Tim tell Imai, “let's settle this.”)

“Make it go away. Those are terrible words,” she says. “They can be misconstrued, but that man will never forget those words.”

Here's a link to the entire tape. If you can't quite stomach the whole thing, here's a link to some of the juiciest quotes.

Musings: Disturbing

It's been a week of disturbing news.....

Jake Delaplane — the former first deputy prosecutor distinguished by his secret tape recordings, bungled prosecution of Councilman Tim Bynum, failure to meet the charter-specified requirements for his job and fierce loyalty to boss-lady Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho — has applied to become a Kauai police officer.

The U.S. government is indiscriminately stockpiling vast quantities of personal data on Americans, including phone records, emails and Internet use, with the National Security Administration National Security Agency "obtaining direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US Internet giants,” the Guardian reports. What's more, it's been going on for years, Democracy Now! reports. And it's not just Verizon customers, everybody is being targeted.

The Kauai Planning Department revealed to the County Council that its entire office virtually shuts down for two months each year to process the 600 or so vacation rental renewals that arrive primarily in July. Yet the Finance Department somehow manages to process more than 70,000 motor vehicle renewals annually without falling apart.

Genes “can pass not only from a [genetically] altered plant to its natural brother, but to less close relatives in the wild,” reports The New York Times. That's why scientists worry about GMO wheat transferring to wild grasses, creating herbicide resistant varieties that will require more potent chemicals to control.  Problem is, it's tough to keep the altered stuff contained, which should be of interest to those of us living in the GMO experimental zones. Monsanto's experimental GMO wheat, which was tested in Hawaii, was mysteriously found growing on an Oregon farm recently. David E. Ervin, an environmental management professor at Portland State University in Oregon, urges caution: 

"All bets are off when you start introducing new kinds of crops. That we haven’t had any serious events to this point doesn’t mean we won’t have significant risk of them occurring in the future.”

Trash isn't just collecting in the great garbage patches floating on the surface of the sea, but also on the deep sea floor, where [i]t's completely changing the natural environment, in a way that we don't know what it's going to do," said Susan von Thun, a study co-author and senior research technician at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Monterey, Calif., in a report on LiveScience.com.

And the planning department gave us visual affirmation of the proliferation of vacation rentals on the rural, isolated North Shore. Approved TVRs are depicted in red — the purple is the visitor destination area in Princeville, where resort uses are supposed to go. Click on the map to enlarge:

Btw, thanks, Planning Director Mike Dahilig, for acknowledging that you are aware of the significant community and environmental impacts imposed by these TVRs. 

Musings: Navigating the Fjords

I spent some time with planning director Mike Dahilig recently, trying to penetrate the opaque world of transient vacation rentals (TVRs) on Kauai. After reading The Garden Island's article, “Planning commissioners frustrated over TVR issues,” it seems like a good time to share some of what transpired.

First, though, I'd like to address two comments that were left on Tuesday's post because they speak to the underlying problem with Ordinance 904, which allows TVR owners on ag lands to apply for permits to legitimize their operations. One person wrote: "You can't "grandfather" in an illegal use." 
This was followed by the reply: “You can render it legal by granting it a special use permit.”

That's false, but certain council members and the mayor, driven by fear that we'd be sued for a “taking,” pretended like it wasn't so they could pass 904. And the county attorney's office was right there, pounding that drum.

Under 904, ag land TVR owners must obtain both a special use permit and a non-conforming use certificate. However, a non-conforming use certificate assumes an operation or activity was legal up until the time the law changed. So all those people who had no special use permit for their ag vacation rentals were operating illegally, and thus are not qualified for a non-conforming use permit.

Yet here they are, applying for and getting those very same permits. Is it any wonder that planning commissioners are frustrated, and justifiably feeling, in the words of Commissioner Hartwell Blake, that these resort uses in the middle of an ag district are “spot zoning?”

Nor is it any wonder, given the underlying contradiction within 904, that its implementation has been accompanied by a mish-mash of conditions that have not been uniformly imposed on all applicants.

Under current state law (Chapter 205), all dwellings on ag land must be associated with farming activities. As Mike noted:

“If we had a definition of a farm dwelling under 205, we wouldn't have this issue of what is a farm. We're dealing with attorneys that try to pass off a couple of papaya trees in the front yard as a farm. I would love the Legislature to give us a definition of a farm.”

The way the county has decided to handle this pesky need for a farm is not to require one outright, but to impose a condition for an agricultural easement. But this doesn't kick in until the applicant comes in for renewal. At that time, if the county determines there's no farm they may assign a farmer to come in and work the land. The process of assigning a farmer, however, hasn't been fully worked out.

As Mike explained it:

The discussion we've had is to look at this as a deterrent. If the county says you've got to let a stranger on your land, you may not want to do TVRs. You've got to get going on a farm or you may have some stranger on your property.

It could be said we're ruling with a stick, rather than a carrot on this one. They're supposed to do ag activities. Our position is you have to have legitimate ag activity. That's what we would look at in terms of enforcement down the road.”

Some applications with this ag easement have been approved, Mike said, though the applicants' attorneys have gone on record objecting to what they consider an arbitrary and capricious condition. “It's up to them to challenge it.”

The department only came up with that condition fairly recently, so it wasn't imposed on some of the first applicants. “It's been a constant adjustment as we get new ideas,” Mike said.

Questions also have been raised about the uniform wording of the TVR applications, and the lack of any critical analysis in the staff report. As The Garden Island reported:

Commissioner Caven Raco found it “disturbing” that two applicants represented by two different attorneys from two distinct firms had applications which were written almost identically. He was referring to an application by Bruce and Cynthia Fehring being written almost identically to a previous application.

Raco questioned if the department was even reading the applications, which prompted planner Michael Laureta to take offense and answer that he does read all applications.

Dahilig defended his staff, saying they do their reports independently and have no control over the product that comes to them.

“If the applicant chooses to pay a consultant, it’s his choice,” Dahilig said.

Actually, what Mike Dahilig told me is that applicants are using a template developed by the planning department. But even though all the applications may look the same “it behooves my department to do a separate set of due diligence. We want to make sure there is an inspection, rather than just take an applicant's word for it.”

So is Mike Laureta, who used to be colleagues with so many of the attorneys who represent ag TVR owners, performing that due diligence well? His boss, Mike Dahilig, seems to think so:

We've rejected a number of applications. We've bounced a lot for i's dotted and t's crossed. Then we look at how legitimate are you. In some cases, we talked them down and they withdrew. We're left with a pool of 60-odd applicants. Our office has done a pretty diligent effort to require them to meet the very high standards of a special use permit.

When asked whether he thinks all those operating TVRs on ag lands have applied for permits, Mike said no. When asked what the county planned to do about it, he replied, “It's one of those on the to-do list items. We know who the culprits are out there.”

In the meantime, since the county conducts enforcement primarily on a complaint basis, citizens are placed in the position of having to observe and rat out neighbors. This becomes especially crucial in regard to TVRs, which must come in for renewals. As Mike explained:

Our authority to withhold [a permit] is based off of my discretion of whether there are land use violations. As the year goes along, we catalog complaints and determine if there is enough to do an investigation. If it is in violative fashion, they won't get their [TVR] certificate back.

Mike said the department has been scrambling to process the 904 applications by the mid-March deadline, while also trying to interpret some of the more “gray areas” in state law:

It really is like navigating a tanker through the fjords. You get close to running up on a reef. Or who knows, we may already be spilling oil.