Gov. Josh Green’s pick to serve as cultural expert on the state’s pivotal water resources board has withdrawn his nomination, officials announced Tuesday, prior to the Senate deciding whether to confirm him.

The move by Hinano Rodrigues follows months of criticism from Hawaiʻi’s conservation community plus a lawsuit over how the governor handled the process to select him for the Commission on Water Resource Management’s seat for a loea, or expert, in traditional stream rights and practices.

Green last year tapped Rodrigues, a retired History and Culture Branch chief with the state, to serve as loea in a limited capacity until the Senate might confirm him. However, as of Tuesday the Senate’s Water and Land Committee still had not scheduled a confirmation hearing for Rodrigues.

Lorraine Inouye, the Hawaiʻi island senator who chairs that committee, said Tuesday that she did not think Rodrigues was qualified to serve as the commission’s loea and that her office has received 175 messages from people across the state opposing him for the post.

She said she met with Green last week to convey her “grave reservations” over Rodrigues’ nomination, and that she informed the governor that any confirmation hearing scheduled for him would “be negative.”

Green, in a news release from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, thanked Rodrigues for “stepping up” and said he believed Rodrigues had the insights and skills needed to navigate the complex challenges that face the water commissioners. Green did not respond to a request made by Civil Beat through his representatives to discuss the matter further.

Rodrigues’ withdrawal leaves the status of that vacant seat, which aims to represent Indigenous cultural rights and practices on the water board, up in the air. A new community group dubbed Hui Kānāwai ʻOiaʻiʻo sued Green in January, contending that he did not properly follow the nomination process.

Specifically, the governor held off for months from nominating a loea only to restart the process when two of four original nominees backed out. That restart yielded Rodrigues’ selection — and it has vexed taro farmers, conservationists and Native Hawaiians across the state who have said they believe Green had more qualified nominees in the original pool.

In September, before Rodrigues was nominated, a coalition of more than six dozen organizations petitioned Green to appoint someone with “substantial experience or expertise in Native
Hawaiian water resource management techniques and traditional Hawaiian riparian usage.”

On Tuesday, Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi Director Wayne Tanaka said in a statement that Rodrigues’ exit gives Green the chance to “choose one of the highly respected, extremely knowledgeable, and incredibly thoughtful candidates that he was originally presented with early last year.”

Meanwhile, attorneys for Hui Kānāwai ‘Oia‘i‘o said the group is staying the course on its lawsuit that aims to ensure the proper process for selecting a nominee is followed.

“Rodrigues’s withdrawal is only the first step to correct the Green Administration’s legal missteps here,” Harley Broyles, an attorney with the environmental legal advocacy group Earthjustice, said in a statement. “Now the Governor needs to follow through and appoint one of the other nominees he’s already been given through the legally mandated process.”