Hearings to investigate critical audits of state land management that quickly pivoted into an investigation of state Auditor Les Kondo — and were scheduled to produce a final report in November — have now extended well into January and require at least another 10 days.
House Majority Leader Rep. Della Au Belatti, chairwoman of the special House Investigative Committee, told the committee Tuesday that she will ask House Speaker Scott Saiki for 10 more days to issue its final report over Kondo’s handling of separate audits of management of state lands by the Agribusiness Development Corp. and the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Belatti originally announced that she wanted a final report to the Legislature well before today’s first day of the new session. She did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment on reasons for the latest delay.
Kondo told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser following Tuesday’s hearing that the committee’s unpublished draft report is “incomplete, unfinished, full of errors, inaccuracies and misinterpretations. There’s very little fact in there, but a lot of biased opinions, insinuations and innuendos.”
More than a dozen pages “are half done, with placeholder text and editorial notes with no findings in the entire draft that was provided to us,” Kondo said.
The draft report was
sent to Kondo on Dec. 30 at 5:16 p.m., after his office closed for three days because Dec. 31 was a state holiday for New Year’s.
Kondo said his office produced a 72-page response by Friday’s committee deadline.
“Our response is based in fact, with no innuendo or biased opinions,” he said.
The hearings began in September with Kondo questioning Belatti why he had to testify under oath when he was willing to help the committee understand the findings of his audits and their recommendations.
Instead, the hearings repeatedly saw tense exchanges between Kondo and Belatti.
On Nov. 3, Circuit Court Judge Lisa Cataldo ordered Kondo to produce two documents that he originally agreed to hand over to the House Investigative Committee, but granted his request to quash subpoenas for other “confidential work papers” that Belatti had repeatedly sought.
Left unanswered by Cataldo’s ruling was whether the original House resolution that created the House Investigative Committee to look into the audits also allowed it to investigate Kondo and his office, even though there was no clear directive to do so. The committee then subsequently began looking into reports that Kondo’s office produced on the city’s troubled rail system.
Then on Oct. 21 committee member Rep. Dale
Kobayashi (D, Manoa- Punahou-Moiliili) questioned the amount of time the committee was spending investigating Kondo when the original purpose was to probe the audits’ findings and recommendations over management of state lands.
Kobayashi did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment, but told the committee in October:
“Not only am I concerned with the legality, or correctness, of us going outside of what I see as the scope of this investigative committee as set forth by the resolution, but that’s also costing us in terms of getting down to the details of what I thought we were here for: investigate those two agencies and the recommendations and findings from the audit reports on those. If you look at the time that we’re spending on those issues directly relative to issues related to the auditor, it’s not even close. We’re spending so much more time with the auditor.”
The start of the House Investigative Committee hearings over Kondo represented his second skirmish with House leadership in 2021.
In March Kondo received a scathing, 79-page review of his office prompted by Saiki that included criticisms that Kondo’s audits missed deadlines, among other complaints.
On Tuesday, Kondo said, “It’s really curious to me that the committee now needs more time.”
Belatti, Kondo said, is “continuing to try to find some kind of smoking gun. But there is no smoking gun.”
