OFFICE OF HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS LOBBYIST HAS BLOOD OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ON HIS HANDS
OHA Stoops To New Lows To Get Akaka Bill Passed
OHA has refused to disclose detailed records of its Washington lobbying campaign, claiming that because the work was performed by law firms, the records are protected by the attorney-client privilege.
A protest of OHA's refusal to reveal the billing records itemized accounts of who was lobbied and what expenses were incurred has been pending before the state Office of Information Practices for more than a year.
OHA spent $1.8 million on Akaka bill lobbying by a major Washington, D.C., lobbying firm, Patton Boggs, according to federal lobbying records.
When the lobbying contract was signed in May 2003, Boggs was charging $735 per hour for his services.
According to author Anne Keala Kelly, "When Boggs Jr.'s firm was known as Patton Boggs & Blow, Boggs lobbied the hill during the Carter Administration against restrictions on the sale of weapons to Guatemala . The firm represented the Guatemalan General turned President, Romeo Lucas Garcia.
Boggs personally represented Amigos del Pais, a group of landowners in Guatemala that helped fund Garcia's death squads, supported throughout the 1980s by the Reagan Administration's CIA, and responsible for the deaths of over two hundred thousand of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples, workers, and human rights activists.
That the Office of Hawaiian Affairs would put themselves into business—and by proxy, all the Indigenous people of Hawai`i—with a firm that has a history of representing the interests of systemic murderers of Indigenous peoples is indeed troublesome."
