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The head of Hawaii’s beleaguered historic preservation division is under fire for lack of leadership for failing to resolve problems that have led to a threat by the federal government to revoke the agency’s certification.

Documents and emails as well as interviews with people familiar with the division show increasing frustration with Pua Aiu, who has led the division since 2008. A National Park Service official sent to help the agency says he quit out of frustration because Aiu resisted any assistance.

Now, Rep. Sharon Har, who has championed the division for years, is demanding a meeting with department heads to get to the bottom of recent concerns over hiring and leadership.

“I’m absolutely at my wits end,” she said. “I fought for this department for the past two years.”

The State Historic Preservation Division has been under fire from the National Park Service, which has oversight under the National Historic Preservation Act. NPS is threatening to revoke SHPD’s federal certification if the agency doesn’t comply by Sept. 30 with a corrective action plan imposed on it two years ago. That could mean trouble for billions of dollars in major projects in Hawaii that require federal permitting or financing.

Aiu declined to respond to the criticism of her leadership. She did say that her agency is working hard with NPS to resolve the issues set out in the corrective action plan.

William Aila, director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, which oversees SHPD, defends Aiu, who is appointed by the governor. His office has received a letter from the Park Service complaining about Aiu’s leadership.

“I’ve seen Pua in action. She has been very cooperative in the year and a half that I have been here with almost every agency I have seen, including the National Park Service,” he told Civil Beat.

He added that he was “fully confident in her abilities to run the division as well as to complete the things required for the corrective action plan.”

An Agency In Disarray

SHPD is struggling to process permits and create an inventory of historic properties that is threatening its federal certification. That could delay major transportation and military projects because SHPD needs to sign off on projects that involve federal funding and permitting.

The agency is trying to dig out of a backlog of about 400 unprocessed permit applications. Last week, the department signed a contract with a private company to bring in temporary staff to deal with the permits.

The federal corrective action plan requires it to hire 10 new employees, including archeologists, before the Sept. 30 deadline.

But Aiu still hasn’t hired enough staff. And state officials are confused about how many people need to be hired and which positions filled in order to remain certified, as Civil Beat reported earlier this week.

The Legislature gave the agency $625,000 to hire staff but SHPD said it couldn’t find qualified people so it spent much of the money — $400,000 — on iPads and 4-wheel-drive vehicles and for a consultant to hire the temporary permitting staff.

Last month, the National Park Service told state officials that SHPD’s leadership is hurting efforts to meet the federal mandates.

“During the past five years, the NPS has provided considerable technical and financial assistance to Hawaii to correct the operational problems of SHPD,” the Park Service said in a letter to Aiu, and copied to Hawaii’s congressional delegation, Gov. Neil Abercrombie and myriad state officials and historic preservation groups.

“While some progress has been achieved, we have observed that the SHPD leadership has not fully embraced this assistance, which we believe has hampered progress in meeting the (corrective action plan),” the letter said.

The Park Service went so far as to hire and pay an independent contractor to help SHPD fulfill the corrective action plan.

But the relationship between Aiu and the federal official appears to have deteriorated quickly, emails obtained by Civil Beat show.

, who led the Texas Historical Commission for a decade, came out of retirement in 2010 to spend more than a year in Hawaii.

Reached in Italy by email, Oaks said that he left his position as a liaison for the National Park Service because of a “lack of cooperation from (Aiu) who neither sought nor would receive counsel on streamlining office operations.”

Oaks says Aiu stonewalled him when he tried to obtain budget information from SHPD — which by law is required to be made public — and that he had to resort to filing public records requests.

“It is ‘astounding’ that I have to resort to an Open Records request to get this information,” he wrote in an email to state officials earlier this year. “I began trying to obtain this critical information over a year ago in the previous fiscal year. Despite the highly erroneous statement that much detail has been provided to me the request is still unanswered.”

Aiu told Civil Beat by email that, “We provided Larry Oaks with all the budget information he asked for.” She declined to comment further.

Oaks had specifically asked for SHPD’s spending plan, according to the state Office of Information Practices, where Oaks also filed a records request when he couldn’t get an answer from SHPD. Aiu said she didn’t have the information, according to OIP.

Aila said it was because SHPD doesn’t keep records in the form that Oaks had requested.

“In DLNR, we don’t do a spending plan. We don’t keep the information in that form,” he said. “Pua was saying that it would have taken a long time to pull out the information in the form that he wants.”

But Oaks told Civil Beat that such a document did exist. And he sent a scathing email to Aiu this past January demanding it:

Please explain to me what part of my request you do not understand and I will elaborate; it all seems self-evident to me. In most states the requested information would be immediately accessible to the NHPA program administrator and probably sitting on their desk.

If I do not get a more professional response I will have to make the request through the Governor’s Office. The Law REQUIRES a timely response!

Oaks told Civil Beat that a concerned staff member subsequently sent him the information secretly.

Lawmaker Wants Answers

Now, SHPD is attracting the attention of state lawmakers and congressional staff, who have expressed concerns about the progress the department is making on the corrective action plan.

Rep. Sharon Har said that she was “outraged” and “livid” when she learned earlier this week from a Civil Beat story that Aiu had purchased the iPads and equipment rather than hiring staff.

Har said that ongoing problems are a reflection of Aiu’s leadership. She called Oaks difficulties in obtaining budget information “disappointing.”

“The fact that this department is struggling so badly is an indication to me of poor administration by the division head,” she said.

Har said she has called for a meeting with Aila and Aiu to talk about the situation. She’s especially concerned over the use of state budget funds to buy the iPads and vehicles and vowed to start an investigation if necessary.

Leadership problems have persisted within SHPD for more than a decade. The former administrator, Melanie Chinen, resigned in 2007 amid complaints that she had created an atmosphere of fear within the department, according to news reports. Thirty-six employees left during her three-year tenure in a department that averages a staff of about 20 people.

Don Hibbard, another former administrator, left in 2002 on the heels of a scathing audit by State Auditor Marion Higa. The audit found poor management and misuse of state resources.

Aiu was appointed by former Gov. Linda Lingle. Har said there was pressure for her to be replaced when Gov. Neil Abercrombie took office, but the administration decided to keep her on.

A 2010 by the National Park Service surveyed staff and people associated with SHPD and found that respondents “generally had no comfort expressing ideas with SHPD leaders, and did not think they communicated openly to the public.”

There were also concerns that SHPD leadership was defensive and that complaints were treated with disrespect.

A last month by the National Park Service found continued discontent among the archeology community and Native Hawaiian groups toward SHPD. A letter from the National Park Service says that people repeatedly stated that there was a lack of transparency and accountability in regard to progress in meeting the corrective action plan.

If the State Historic Preservation Division fails to meet the federal requirements Hawaii will become the first state in the country to lose its certification, raising questions about how projects that involve federal funding, permitting or licensing will proceed. National Park Service officials have been working on a back-up plan in case this happens.

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