Opinion ID: 2646157
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The department shall render a decision on a

Text: completed application for a permit within one-hundredeighty days of its acceptance by the department. If within one-hundred-eighty days after acceptance of a completed application for a permit, the department shall fail to give notice, hold a hearing, and render a decision, the owner may automatically put the owner’s land to the use or uses requested in the owner’s application. When an environmental impact statement is required pursuant to chapter 343, or when a contested case hearing is requested pursuant to chapter 91, the one-hundred-eighty-days may be extended an additional ninety days at the request of the applicant. Any request for additional extensions shall be subject to the approval of the board. Although HRS § 183C-6(b) does reference the “hold[ing] [of] a hearing” as part of the permitting process for uses in the conservation district, it does not mandate one. The sentence that contains the phrase “hold a hearing” is written as a negative conditional; in other words, if, within 180 days of accepting an application, DLNR does not give notice, does not hold a hearing, and does not render a decision on the application, then the applicant may proceed to use the land in the manner requested. Because some hearings may not be required by law but may nevertheless be held voluntarily, we cannot read the statute to require a hearing for all permit applications in the absence of mandatory language directing the agency to do so. Indeed, the statutes in HRS chapter 171 governing DLNR and BLNR speak in general terms and delegate rulemaking authority to the agency to devise and promulgate the rules that will govern the agency’s procedures in specific situations. We thus next 17  FOR PUBLICATION IN WEST’S HAWAI#I REPORTS AND PACIFIC REPORTER  look to those administrative rules for a requirement that a public hearing be held as part of the process of considering an application for a conservation district use permit. In this particular case, UH seeks through its application to build astronomy facilities near the summit of Haleakalâ, an area which is classified as being in the general subzone of the conservation district. HAR § 13-5-25, “Identified land uses in the general subzone,” provides, in pertinent part: (a) In addition to the land uses identified in this section, all identified land uses and their associated permit or site plan approval requirements listed for the protective, limited, and resource subzones also apply to the general subzone, unless otherwise noted. . . .