May Lau volunteers to teach three sessions of Mahjong each week in a room at Kīlauea District Park, a city facility next to Kaimukī Middle School.

The classes at the park’s recreation center — including ping pong, seated exercises for seniors, aerobics and line dancing — are offered free of charge mostly to elderly retirees, some of whom walk from their nearby Kaimukī homes.

“People are happy here,” Lau said when I visited one of her classes. “They come early to classes. It is a sense of fellowship, to play and get together with friends and make new friends. It is a chance for them to get out of their houses and spend three hours free from household duties. Just listen to their laughter over the click of the mahjong tiles.”

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Earlier this month, Lau says she was stunned when Honolulu Parks Director Laura Thielen emailed her and other volunteer teachers to let them know that if the governor signs Senate Bill 2613 into law, all city park permits, activities and classes would cease on July 15.

Until that email, Lau said, the park users had no notice of the impact to them and their classes. She said if they had known they would have done more to protest.

A provision in the bill calls for the transfer of ownership of Kīlauea District Park from the city to the Hawaiʻi Department of Education.

Thielen says if the education department took over ownership of the park, the city’s classes would have to be terminated because DOE does not allow daytime recreation programs during school days and does not rent facilities to multiple users on weekends or nights. It locks school parking lots on weekends.

The education department said it never asked for the transfer. 

“It caught us by surprise,” DOE Deputy Superintendent of Operations Jesse Souki said.

This episode illustrates how seemingly small changes to bills in the middle of the legislative session can carry major unintended consequences which affected agencies and the people depending on the agencies do not fully understand until after passage.

In an email to Civil Beat on Sunday, the governor’s office said the administration will fix what happened by introducing legislation next year to make sure the park remains in the possession of the city.

“In the meantime, we will work with the City and County of Honolulu to ensure no interruptions to current use,” the governor’s senior advisor, Will Kane, wrote.

The DOE says it wants to take ownership only of property directly under the footprint of Kaimukī Middle School and the school’s parking lot.

SB 2613 began as an innocuous technical measure written to streamline the transfer of certain city and state lands under dozens of public schools to the ownership of the Department of Education. But when the bill moved over for consideration by the House, Water and Land chairman Rep. Mark Hashem inserted an amendment to additionally transfer the city’s ownership of Kīlauea District Park — its multi-purpose rooms, gym and its parking lot — to Kaimukī Middle School.

Hashem said he decided on his own to add new language to the bill because he thought giving the DOE ownership of Kīlauea park facilities would make it easier for Kaimukī Middle School to receive funding to repair aging bleachers, falling tiles and the leaking roof in the gym. The roof is also leaking in the recreation center where classes are taught and tiles are falling off the ceiling.

Hashem said the gym’s disrepair came to his attention this year when his son was finishing his final year at Kaimukī Middle School. When the school is in session, students can use Kīlauea park facilities. He said the bleachers are so dilapidated that spectators bring their own portable chairs to watch games.

The amended bill contains no provisions to direct funding for repairs to the gym or other recreation rooms.

Thielen says money is already in the city’s budget this year to begin repair of the facility’s leaking roof.

She said after Hashem introduced the amendment, she met with him and Rep. Tina Grandinetti to urge Hashem to take it out of the bill, which she said Hashem promised her he would do. But he did not remove the amendment.

He and Grandinetti, who represent the area where the gym is located, both voted to approve the final measure.

Grandinetti said her final vote in favor was because she thought Hashem had removed the amendment.

“I thought it was resolved and had no indication it had not been fixed,” she said. Since then, she said she has been working with park users and the governor’s office to try to correct what turned out to be a serious and unintended outcome.

Hashem said he retained the amendment in the bill to transfer park buildings to the school because he still figured it would benefit the education department. He said he never intended to disrupt park activities.

“This should not have happened the way it did,” mahjong instructor Lau said. “I understand the need for ownership of the lands directly beneath the school to belong to the DOE but not the park itself. It’s good news the governor’s office will make sure the park’s programs continue. Obviously, we want to keep playing.”