The Kealoha scandal, which brought down Honolulu’s primary law-and-order agencies, conveyed some powerful lessons on how breakdowns in good government can happen.

It appears, however, that the leadership of the city Department of the Prosecuting Attorney did not learn them, or at least they did not put them into practice.

That was the devastating conclusion of the Office of the City Auditor, and it demands corrective action.

In the report, acting Auditor Troy Shimasaki rightly pressed the agency to implement a conflict-of-interest disclosure policy and a formal internal complaints system, one aimed at rooting out the misconduct threading through the case of a top deputy prosecutor.

The report was written in response to a City Council resolution requesting performance audits of both the prosecutor’s office and the Honolulu Police Department.

That was triggered by the case of former police Chief Louis Kealoha and his wife, former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, both of whom were sentenced to prison last week following convictions on charges including fraud, conspiracy and obstruction. Their schemes included one attempt to frame the former prosecutor’s uncle in a family dispute over money.

“The City Council expressed concern that the events of the Kealoha incident should have been evident to management and personnel within PAT (Prosecuting Attorney) long before they were brought to light by media reports,” Shimasaki wrote in a Dec. 4 letter to the Council accompanying the audit.

The former deputy’s case included her concealment of her brother’s drug distribution activities by arranging to be assigned as prosecutor for the brother’s co-conspirators.

The corrupt conflict of interest there, and the circumvention of ethics standards, are simply stunning. How precisely this was enabled is still uncertain, but it surely hinged on an office culture that allowed for this abuse of power.

Kealoha’s boss, Prosecuting Keith Kaneshiro, has not been charged in connection with the cases. But Kaneshiro did receive a target letter from the U.S. Department of Justice, which was conducting the probe, and since March 2019 has been on paid administrative leave. He will be succeeded by Steve Alm, just elected and due to take office Jan. 2.

It’s clear that Alm’s job will start out with some housecleaning, because none of that happened in Kaneshiro’s absence under Dwight Nadamoto, now serving as acting prosecutor.

Among the audit’s many criticisms was a finding that the office lacked protocols for identifying conflicts of interest. This surely could have flagged Katherine Kealoha’s concealment and, potentially, headed off her misdeeds.

In addition to the proposed fixes to conflict-of-interest policies and its handling of internal complaints, another of the auditor’s nine recommendations was a proposal that the Council form a commission to evaluate the prosecutor annually.

This would be problematic. The prosecutor is elected and answers to the voters, so other than providing some public oversight — something the fully staffed Ethics Commission and the Hawaii State Bar Association already can do — it’s unclear what another commission could accomplish.

In its response, the Prosecuting Attorney Department acknowledged the need for “restoring public trust” but took issue with some of the conclusions — asserting, for example, that Kealoha was accountable by her own professional standards to disclose any conflicts.

But the agency undeniably bears responsibility, as well, and should be on top of its own problems without needing intervention by federal investigators. That’s the route toward restoring public trust, and there are no shortcuts leading to that goal.