The federal charges filed against five Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting employees for allegedly accepting bribes add credibility to years-old accusations of corruption in the city’s building permit process.
The Hawaii U.S. Attorney’s office on Tuesday accused two current and three former DPP employees of soliciting thousands of dollars from people to advance building projects.
Those charged are:
>> Wayne Inouye, 64, of Honolulu, a former building plans examiner at DPP
>> Jocelyn Godoy, 58, of Pearl City, an employee of the data access and imaging branch at DPP
>> Jason Dadez, 42, of Honolulu, a building inspector at DPP
>> Jennie Javonillo, 71, of Waipahu, a former building plans examiner at DPP
>> Kanani Padeken, 36, of Kaaawa, a building plans examiner at DPP
The three current DPP employees, Godoy, Dadez and Padeken, have been placed on immediate leave with pay, which will be dependent on the outcome of each case, according to Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s spokesman, Tim Sakahara.
Corruption at the DPP has been alleged for years.
It came up three years ago during an explosive City Council meeting over a bill that would speed up building permits for one- and two-family dwellings.
“I don’t want to blatantly say bribery, but there are gifts and favoritism. I have had multiple real estate agents and many, many clients ask me to pay a gift to a ‘friend’ in DPP to have their permits, you know, passed through, and I refuse,” said civil engineer and permit router Lauren Hudson during the Oct. 18, 2018, Council meeting.
“I shouldn’t have to pay a civil servant a gift to do their job … I don’t want to go to jail by bribing a city official no matter how long (it takes to get a permit), and how desperate I am.”
Following Hudson’s comments, former Councilman Ron Menor cautioned her to be careful what she said.
“You’ve raised some very serious allegations. You’ve used the words bribery, favoritism, gifts being handed under the table … Do you have concrete evidence to back that up?” he asked.
“If you don’t, you ought to be very careful about making those kinds of statements.”
The U.S. Attorney accused the DPP employees of doing exactly what Hudson alleged.
Inouye, the former building plans examiner, for example, was accused of “soliciting and accepting gifts, payments and other things of value totaling at least $89,205.81 from an architect,” the indictment said. Inouye “provided favorable official action” on behalf of the architect, including expediting approval of projects ahead of projects previously submitted by others, the indictment said.
Former Councilwoman Kym Pine, who in 2018 was the chair of the Committee on Zoning and Housing, said in an interview Wednesday that DPP’s structure is what could allow this type of corruption.
“It leaves so much for interpretation, and so you’re giving too much power to anyone looking at the paperwork, where they could change their mind. Things should instead be set in stone,” she said.
“It would lead to anyone who is desperate for extra money to be caught in that kind of temptation. And you have contractors who are desperate to feed their families and get projects going.”
Pine began investigating DPP after hearing Hudson’s testimony and came up with plans to reform the department.
One of her ideas was to move the emphasis to project inspections, instead of plan review, to speed up the slow permitting process.
“Instead of having a heavy plan-review process, go through a process where we have these checklists of what the applicant needs to accomplish. Give them their permit right away if those checklists are met, and then put all their money into the inspection process to make sure that what’s on the paper that they give to the city, is what’s really happening in the field,” she said.
“This will make sure that people are not lying because anyone can lie on paper. This will make sure there’s no illegal vacation rental units being made, this will make sure that no illegal structures are being built and we’ll catch it right away.”
Opponents of Honolulu’s so-called monster homes, new large structures in older neighborhoods with mostly smaller homes, have often wondered how those homes get approved, said Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, with HI Good Neighbor, a community group that opposes the large dwellings in residential neighborhoods.
“Community members continue to ask, ‘How do certain projects move forward, but not others?’,” he said.
“I think, after (Tuesday’s) indictments, we have a little bit of an answer.”
Dos Santos-Tam said he has heard from other people in the community who have been threatened, or felt if they asked questions there would be retaliation from within the DPP.
“Obviously, there there are some folks who profited from this scheme,” he said.
“But I bet a whole lot of other people knew what was going on and ignored it for far too long.”
Blangiardi’s spokesman said in an email, “The department is disappointed by the events and we certainly do not condone the activities alleged in the indictments.”
“These alleged activities should not reflect on the more than 200 dedicated DPP employees who work hard every day to ensure the health and safety of the citizens of Honolulu,” he said.
An architect, William Wong, also was charged with taking part in and devising the pay-to-play scheme, including helping one of the accused employees, Padeken, conceal information.
Wong is the head of Asia Pacific Architectural Consultants LLC, a company that specializes in third-party review.
A third-party reviewer is paid by the the project developer or property owner to check that permit applications submitted to DPP are compliant with the rules. Third-party reviewers are certified by DPP, and are meant to expedite building permit application review.
However, Dos Santos-Tam was skeptical about whether this system actually benefits the public.
“I think it breeds a system where the the foxes who are supposed to guard the hen house have outsourced it to wolves,” he said.
The bill Hudson testified on in 2018 passed, and is now a city ordinance.
Inouye, Godoy and Javonillo had initial court appearances on Wednesday morning.
