State Attorney General Clare Connors is requesting an extra $1 million a year for pay increases to be distributed among the 200 lawyers that work in her office, and is seeking 10 additional staffers for a new unit designed to pursue complex cases including public corruption and theft from state programs.
Connors is also asking state lawmakers for an extra $3.2 million to be used in the next six months to finance coordinated law enforcement operations such as the response to the ongoing protests on Mauna Kea, and another $5.5 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1 for similar law enforcement operations.
Gov. David Ige said last month that responding to the ongoing protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope has cost the state $15 million so far. TMT opponents camped in the middle of the Mauna Kea Access Road from July to December in an effort to halt work on the $1.4 billion telescope project, which remains stalled.
In a presentation to lawmakers last week, Connors asked for $510,000 for the Complex Litigation Fraud and Compliance Unit, which she said is designed to “strengthen public confidence in government by investigating and prosecuting complex matters including government corruption, program theft and fraud, campaign spending fraud, bribery and other matters that could erode the public’s confidence in government.”
The unit is empowered to pursue administrative and civil penalties as well as criminal prosecutions, and can work with federal and local authorities to pursue cases, according to testimony submitted by Connors, who is a former assistant U.S. attorney in the criminal division in Hawaii.
The unit is being led by Larry Tong, who recently moved to the AG’s office from the Honolulu U.S. Attorney’s Office. Tong is a longtime federal prosecutor who supervised both the criminal and civil litigation divisions of the U.S. Attorney’s Office “and led complex corruption investigations that resulted in numerous convictions,” according to Connors’ office.
Last year was a time of head-spinning allegations and cases of alleged public corruption in Hawaii, including the case of former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha.
Kealoha and his wife, former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, were convicted in June of conspiracy and obstruction of justice after an investigation by U.S. attorneys, and on Oct. 22 Kealoha entered into a plea agreement related to three other criminal indictments.
City Corporation Counsel Donna Leong has been on paid administrative leave for more than a year after she received a target letter indicating she was under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, and Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro has been on voluntary leave since March after he received his own target letter.
Meanwhile, federal officials issued a series of subpoenas and conducted interviews with current and former employees of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation in what appears to be a wide-ranging investigation of the city’s $9.2 billion rail project. Tong had a hand in the rail inquiry during his time with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Honolulu.
Also last year, Frank James Lyon of the engineering firm Lyon Associates Inc. was accused in federal court filings of paying $240,000 to bribe Hawaii government workers to win a $2.5 million contract. The filings say that about $132,000 was paid to a state employee “purportedly for marketing services.”
Lyon, a former member of the Honolulu Zoning Board of Appeals, was sentenced in May to more than two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He admitted he paid $200,000 in bribes between 2006 and 2016 to two officials of the Federated States of Micronesia to win contracts worth $7.8 million.
Connors also requested $1 million for raises for lawyers in her office. The deputies’ pay is tied to their years of experience, with attorneys with up to five years of experience earning a median of $80,572 and lawyers with more than 30 years of experience earning a median of $109,464, according to data supplied by Connors’ staff.
An analysis of pay in the office found that the deputies are “under-compensated compared to their public-sector peers,” according to material provided by Connors’ staff. “As a result, the department loses a significant number of attorneys to positions in other public-sector areas.”
During the past year the office lost 45 deputies, including many who left for other government jobs. The pay increases “will help with both recruitment and retention, which are critically important to the long-term stability and growth of the Department of the Attorney General,” according to the memo.
