OHA interim general counsel outlines staffing gaps, budget needs and continued contract support for beneficiary legal services

Interim General Counsel Everett Ota told the Office of Hawaiian Affairs Budget & Finance Committee on May 20 that the Corporate Counsel Office is understaffed and that the general counsel position has been vacant for about three-and-a-half years.

“The office is headed by the General Counsel, which I currently serve as the interim in that position,” Ota said, explaining the office currently relies on one full-time attorney supported by a temporary paralegal and outside counsel when specialized work arises.

Ota said the office provides in-house legal support to both OHA administration and the board and oversees risk and records management. He described a staffing plan to recruit a permanent general counsel and subordinate positions and noted some recruitments are open or pending. “The recruitment for the legal office administrator opened last week,” he said, and added other recruitments will be posted shortly.

Trustees pressed on causes and timing of the vacancies. Trustee Akina asked why so few positions are filled; Ota pointed to departures, retirements and difficulty recruiting viable candidates. Stacy Pereira, Kapohana (CEO), said the administration is re-examining the office’s structure and compensation to make positions competitive. “It’s just not competitive. In fact, all of our executive positions are under market,” Pereira said.

Budget and contract details

Ota walked trustees through a budget summary for the Corporate Counsel Office. The presentation lists line items including insurance premiums, record-storage costs and subscriptions for legal research. Ota said the office budgets about $300,000 for outside legal services and maintains a contract for direct legal services to beneficiaries procured under a legislative budget proviso. “That contract is currently with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation,” Ota said.

On the direct legal services funding, trustees asked whether the contract amounts and proviso language appear in the current budget bill. Ota and staff said they would confirm the details and whether specific proviso language appears in the most recent appropriation.

Trustees also questioned specific budget lines: LexisNexis subscriptions (recorded in the packet as “Lexinexie”) are used for legal research and were confirmed as LexisNexis; the current license pricing is based on two attorney seats with the option to add a third. Record-storage costs were described as charges paid to an off-site vendor (Access Storage) for hard-copy records required by the records retention schedule. Ota described a $30,000 contingency line for potential settlements and said insurance premiums and SIRs (self-insured retentions) affect how much contingency funding is appropriate.

Use of outside counsel and the role of Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation

Ota and trustees discussed the agency strategy of retaining specialized outside counsel for discrete projects (for example, real-estate financing and litigation) rather than hiring large numbers of in-house specialists. “The breadth of this agency’s work is very wide,” Ota said, arguing that contracting for specialties can be more efficient than keeping specialized litigators on staff.

Trustees asked how the direct legal services contract with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation (NHLC) is used. Ota said the NHLC contract historically covered the full direct-legal-services proviso amounts and that NHLC provides client services, impact litigation and other legal work supporting Native Hawaiian rights, including quiet-title actions and representation related to lessee matters with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. He said NHLC provides quarterly reports on clients served and case trends and is expected to present to OHA’s Beneficiary Advocacy and Empowerment Committee for more detail.

Clarifications and next steps

Trustees repeatedly pressed for clearer timelines and staffing targets. Several trustees urged posting and filling the general counsel and supporting attorney positions promptly. Pereira said she would meet with the chair and chief of staff to prioritize recruitment. Ota said the general counsel job description was being revised to improve competitiveness and that changes to minimum qualifications and salary would be considered.

The committee asked Ota to return with clarifications on: whether a proviso for direct legal services appears in the latest budget bill; the per-seat cost to expand LexisNexis licenses; and a more detailed breakdown of record-storage and contingency expenses. Ota agreed to follow up.

Ending

The Corporate Counsel Office presentation concluded with trustees emphasizing urgency on filling legal leadership and ensuring the NHLC contract continues to target services that cannot be readily duplicated elsewhere. Ota and administration staff committed to returning with requested clarifications for the trustees’ review.