HIRA News
EXCLUSIVE: OHA Whistleblower Lawsuit Reveals Intimidation, Retaliation, and Corruption
Honolulu, Hawaii — The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is once again engulfed in scandal. [This part you may already know.] On Tuesday, September 23, 2025, the OHA Board of Trustees voted in a closed door session to place Chief Executive Officer Stacy Kealohalani Ferreira on ‘paid administrative leave’. Ferreira told staff in a memo that she was taking “personal leave,” but Board Chair Kai Kahele confirmed the action the next day in an all staff meeting and announced that Biden Interior Dept. appointee turned Kahele’s chief of staff, Summer Sylva, would step in as interim CEO.
But the part you probably DON’T know, because the local news media refuses to tell you, is that just three days after Ferreira was put on ‘personal leave‘, OHA got slapped with a LAWSUIT they knew was coming. Yes, HIRA News can report how severe misbehavior by top leaders at OHA is directly connected to their belated decision to ask the problematic CEO to step aside . . . and that others at OHA may soon find themselves no longer having a desk to work at inside what is arguably one of the worst-run and most ill-conceived government agencies around. Local reporters and anchors seems to be helping OHA to downplay and disguise the real reason for Ms. Ferreira being put on ‘paid administrative leave’. Not HIRA News!
Interesting also is that the alleged victim of recent shenanigans at OHA (which led to the sudden and apparent ouster of its CEO) had previously been victimized with 1st degree terroristic threatening by militant sovereignty activists who briefly ‘took over’ OHA six years ago. Naturally, the woke virtue signalers at the Honolulu Prosecutor’s office chose not to prosecute, even after describing the crime as “harassment strike shove kick insult taunt” by Remedio Lawrence Kawai Dabaluz of the so-called ‘Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi’. Hopefully, this victim’s luck is about to turn around after being mistreated by both kingdom nutjobs and by those nation within a nation ‘land and money’ types who infest OHA.
Well, without any further ado, let’s rip off the shroud obscuring the real goings on at OHA. HIRA News’ Kai Lorinc has the story you’re NOT being told . . .
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The narrative in the lawsuit begins in early December 2023. According to the filing, Ferreira directed Aki to prepare testimony for Trustee Carmen Hulu Lindsey regarding East Maui revocable water permits, a politically fraught issue. Plaintiff Aki objected in writing, saying testimony of that kind required both review by legal counsel and approval of the Board of Trustees. He warned that bypassing those safeguards could expose OHA to legal and ethical risk. Aki’s civil complaint says his warnings were brushed aside.
What followed, Aki alleges, was overt intimidation in the office. In a December 6, 2023 meeting, OHA Advocacy Director Keʻōpūlaulani Reelitz allegedly lost her temper raising her voice so loudly that others could hear, pulling her own hair, growling, scowling, sighing audibly, and belittling Aki’s competence. The complaint characterizes the environment as “intimidating, uninviting, and toxic,” and says the pattern left Aki depressed, fearful, and mentally exhausted.
On December 9, Aki filed a formal HR complaint documenting the conduct. Nine days later December 18 OHA fired him. The agency said he engaged in misconduct tied to the procurement of souvenir ceramic cups for OHA’s 2024 legislative package. Aki calls the charge a pretext. He points to prior guidance he says he obtained from the state Ethics Commission, which advised him to treat the items as gifts “to play it safe” while the question was reviewed.
The dispute carried into Aki’s unemployment claim. OHA opposed benefits, telling the state he had been discharged for cause. The Unemployment Insurance Division initially agreed, and an administrative referee affirmed. But, six grueling months later, in May 2025, Circuit Judge John Tonaki reversed those rulings and restored Aki’s benefits, undercutting OHA’s assertion that misconduct justified the firing. Such a ruling all but guaranteed a lawsuit by Aki against his former friends at the highly dysfunctional OHA.
Aki’s civil suit seeks back pay and other damages, general and punitive damages, statutory fines per-violation under state law, attorneys’ fees and costs, and pre and post judgment interest. Defendants include the agency itself, Ferreira, former Chief Operating Officer Casey Brown, and Reelitz.
Ferreira’s suspension lands atop years of churn inside the agency. OHA has struggled to hold senior talent. Its chief operating officer left after roughly a year the long time chief of finance retired, and Ferreira herself acknowledged at a September 18 board session that about 20 percent of OHA’s 166 positions were vacant 34 jobs unfilled with plans to trim the vacancy rate by year’s end. In that same period the board elevated K. Sean Kekina to COO and praised Sylva’s government and advocacy background while tapping her as interim administrator until further notice. The trustees say they intend to maintain continuity of operations.
Beyond personnel, however, lies a familiar, corrosive critique: money and accountability. Over decades, state audits and watchdogs have flagged weak internal controls, non-competitive or poorly documented contracts, and spending that critics say fails to produce measurable outcomes for the public the agency claims to serve. Detractors argue the pattern is not random mistakes but a durable system of patronage where public dollars are steered to insiders. In the blunt words of several critics, OHA has operated “like an organized crime ring for ethnic Hawaiians,” with allegations that money earmarked for housing, healthcare, education, and community services has instead fed political allies, lobbyists, and personal agendas. Those allegations some described as embezzlement or “missing money” remain the subject of intense public debate the agency has long disputed suggestions of widespread criminality, and not every accusation has been adjudicated. But the cumulative effect is clear taxpayers fund an institution entrusted with roughly $600 million in trust assets, and the returns are indefensibly thin.
The legal foundation of the agency is also under renewed scrutiny. In Rice v. Cayetano (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down OHA’s ancestry-based voter eligibility rules, holding that limiting trustee elections by ancestry violated the Fifteenth Amendment. In 2023, the Court sharply restricted the use of race in government linked decision making when it ended race conscious college admissions an area distinct from OHA but widely read as signaling hostility to racist ancestry supremacy.
Unlike federally recognized tribes, ethnic Hawaiians do not hold political status under federal law. That distinction matters because the high court in Morton v. Mancari (1974) treated preferences tied to federally recognized tribes as political, not racial. Critics contend OHA can’t claim the Mancari shield and that racist programs at state agencies will struggle under modern Equal Protection review. Even past efforts to dismantle OHA have often faltered not on the merits but on standing and procedural grounds, leaving the constitutional question unresolved and likely to resurface.
For now, Ferreira remains on leave. Sylva has told staff her priority is stability and continuity. But with a detailed whistleblower case now before Judge Tomasa, with workplace retaliation allegations on the record including the meeting where an OHA executive allegedly yelled, pulled her hair, and growled at a subordinate and with longstanding claims of missing money and patronage again in the headlines, OHA faces a reckoning that is legal, political, and moral all at once. Whether the agency can demonstrate fiduciary competence and constitutional compliance will define the next chapter.
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