In Memoriam: On March 5, Jonathan Starr passed away in Woodstock, New York. He will be remembered in Hawaiʻi for his advocacy for clean water and clean government. He chaired the Maui County Planning Commission and the Democratic Party, served on the Commission on Water Resource Management, the Maui Water Board, and the community associations of Kaupo and Wailuku, among many other organizations.
Starr and his wife, Helen Nielsen, lived in the Kaupo area of Maui for two decades before relocating to New York.
We also remember Chuck Prentiss of Kailua, Oʻahu, who passed away on April 14. Among his many contributions to the community, he was for years a member of the Kailua Neighborhood Board, past president of Hawaiʻi’s Thousand Friends, served on the state Environmental Council, and was instrumental in the campaign to protect Kawainui Marsh.
Tim Tunison, for years a biologist working at the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, died in Volcano on March 5.
Finally, we note, belatedly, the passing of Jon Giffin, who died May 1, 2024. Giffin worked most of his career as a forester with the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
The contributions of Tunison and Giffin to our understanding of and protection for native species are far too great to list here. Yet everyone working in the conservation field in Hawaiʻi, as well as everyone enjoying our native forests and parks, owes them a debt of gratitude.
Marconi Update: In March, we reported that companies owned by Jeremiah Henderson, III that have been involved in the development of Marconi Point on Oʻahu’s North Shore had sought to amend their federal complaint against the City & County of Honolulu and its Department of Planning and Permitting for a third time.
The companies had argued that “new evidence” provided by the DPP during discovery (an email chain among DPP officials regarding agricultural subdivision requirements) indicated that the agency was involved in illegal rule making and, therefore, allowed for the reintroduction of the companies’ building permit claims that had been dismissed by U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake.
On March 28, Magistrate Judge Wes Reber Porter denied the companies’ motion to amend, finding that they “were not diligent in discovering the basis for amendment or in seeking amendment once the basis for amendment had been discovered. Therefore, Plaintiffs fail to meet the ‘good cause’ standard required.”
Porter also rejected the companies’ arguments that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which calls on courts to “not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous,” and to now “exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority,” supported their amendment request.
The Loper decision overturned the decades-old “Chevron” doctrine, which directed courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of laws that are vague or silent on a certain issue.
“Plaintiffs’ concern that [Otake] conducted a Chevron analysis that must now be revisited under Loper is entirely misplaced,” Porter wrote. “Further, Loper was decided on June 28, 2024, nearly a month before the deadline to amend the pleadings expired on July 23, 2024. Plaintiffs could have moved to file an amended complaint based on Loper before the deadline expired, but Plaintiffs chose not to. And the Court is not convinced that the ‘new evidence’ somehow makes Loper applicable to this case. Rather, Plaintiffs allowed the deadline to expire and waited more than six months before seeking amendment based on Loper,” he wrote.
On April 11, the companies filed their objections to Porter’s order and asked judge Otake to set it aside.
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