After more than a year, the state body that will take over management of the Maunakea summit region has a new director, though not without controversy.
The Maunakea Stewardship and Oversight Authority voted Thursday to approve the appointment of John De Fries as the its executive director.
De Fries, formerly the president and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority from 2020 until 2023, has a long career of project management and real estate development, and received considerable testimony from people in support of his nomination Thursday,
However, he also received substantial pushback from residents and Hawaiian activists who believe he will pursue a pro-development vision of the mountain.
Attorney Bianca Isaki, representing activist nonprofit KAHEA, said De Fries’ nomination is a continuation of what she sees as the authority’s true goal: “to make plausible the sense that the state is moving toward Hawaiian community acceptance of the (Thirty Meter Telescope).”
Isaki said De Fries previously has made comments supportive of the construction of the TMT, but also in support of TMT opponents’ right to protest, which she said is a disingenuous framing of the issue consistent with “a state agenda.”
“This is precisely the way the state wants to frame the issue, as one in which people can say whatever they want about the TMT, but it’ll be built anyway,” Isaki said. “It shows they aren’t listening and neither, I’m sorry, is Mr. De Fries.”
Other testifiers, Isaki included, noted that De Fries was at various times between 2000 and 2018 a consultant, CEO and president of 1250 Oceanside Partners — a development firm that was involved in litigation against various community groups over accusations the firm had desecrated multiple burial sites while developing the ill-fated Hokuli‘a luxury home subdivision in West Hawaii.
“I was sickened to read in (De Fries’) resume ‘cultural sites and burial sites protection,’” said KAHEA representative Shelley Muneoka. “He helped to construct a six-foot wall around a pu‘u to ‘protect’ it, while a 1,500-acre development and golf course went up around it. It’s tone-deaf and naive to consider this a win.”
Muneoka called De Fries “a person who is willing to sit at the head of controversial projects that divide our communities, and will pay apologetic lip service but plow forward anyway.”
“The leader of this organization shouldn’t be someone who is practiced at taking karmic hits of splitting communities and even families in the service of ‘business as usual’ … Uncompromising and uncompromised is what we should be striving for,” Muneoka said.
For his part, De Fries said his involvement in 1250 Oceanside Partners was motivated by his own discovery that his maternal great-grandmother’s remains were located near the Hokuli‘a development site.
“Having your own great-grandmother there was a life-changing event, and it imposed certain standards on conduct that are just natural,” De Fries said, adding that any action 1250 Oceanside took involving iwi kupuna was taken with the involvement of lineal descendants. “I take full responsibility for everything we did there. Did we make mistakes? No question. But … I call on us to resist the temptation of retrying the case.”
Ultimately, the authority’s board voted to accept De Fries’ nomination, but not unanimously, with board members Lanakila Mangauil and Kalehua Krug both voting against it.
Mangauil said the authority — which in four years will take over management of the summit area from the University of Hawaii — owes its very existence to change initiated by the Hawaiian community during the 2019 Maunakea protests, and noted that many of the organizations in support of De Fries’ nomination were not present during that time.
“My biggest concern is the optics,” Krug said. “It comes across as being the perpetuation of the status quo. We’re supposed to not just be different but look different.”
Board chair John Komeiji said the divided vote was preferable to a unanimous one.
“People try to have unanimous votes, but I don’t believe in that,” Komeiji said. “I think that everyone should vote their conscience, because it makes for a better organization.”
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
