SHPD

Honolulu Civil Beat, 1/7/2014 By Sophie Cocke Alan Downer sat in his office at the State Historic Preservation Division last month looking perplexed. He had been on the job as the new administrator of SHPD for less than two weeks and a state legislator had already filed a formal public records request for him to deal with. "I'm thinking, 'You're a legislator. Why don't you just ask (me)?'" he recalled during a recent interview. Why the lawmaker felt the need to "up the ante like that" with an official request under Hawaii's Uniform Information Practices Act, as opposed to simply calling him and asking for the information, escaped him. He was happy to share the information. "We are doing the people's business and people have every right to know what we are doing," said Downer. "What we do here is for the people. It's not for me or the people of this office. It's for the people of Hawaii." But SHPD, which has faced numerous controversies over land development and the preservation of Native Hawaiian cultural artifacts in recent years, has been under fire from both federal officials and the public for its lack of transparency — likely prompting the formal records request. Changing the agency's opaque work culture is just one of the obstacles Downer faces as the new leader of the state agency in charge of protecting Hawaii's cultural and historical resources. Federal and state officials are hoping that Downer, who spent the last 27 years working for the Navajo Nation, will help mend the agency's relationships with the public, shore up its internal operations and, most importantly, lead the agency out of the cross-hairs of the National Park Service. The park service [...]