Hawaii Tourism Authority board Chair Todd Apo was way premature in urging the board to “put to bed” and “move on” from concerns raised by a state audit about questionable discounts given by the Hawai‘i Convention Center to two nonprofits associated with former HTA board Chair Mufi Hannemann.
As reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, there are too many unresolved questions about justification for the discounts and the thoroughness of the board’s investigation.
The Hawai‘i Lodging & Tourism Association, which Hannemann runs, and the Pacific Century Fellows he founded are reputable organizations, but it’s fair to ask how the discounts they received served the state or its taxpayers.
There should be no moving on until there’s full public airing of how the discounts were decided, what payments are due and how comping policy is being tightened. Apo’s attempted short-circuit looks like one member of the old-boy network taking care of another.
Hawaii has a history of prematurely “moving on” from controversy by sweeping details under the rug to shield responsible officials without taking time to learn what went wrong and fix it.
In the Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate scandals of the 1990s, millions of dollars in misappropriated trust funds likely went unrecovered as authorities rushed to move on after the IRS forced the removal of trustees who mismanaged the $10 billion estate.
More recently, the Honolulu Police Commission was so eager to move on from Chief Louis Kealoha’s federal criminal problems that it rammed through a $250,000 retirement payout for the chief without public input or required City Council approval.
Kealoha and his prosecutor wife, Katherine, are now doing prison time for fraud and conspiracy. Former Police Commission Chair Max Sword, former city Corporation Counsel Donna Leong and former city Managing Director Roy Amemiya reached plea agreements on federal misdemeanor conspiracy charges and agreed to fines totaling the $250,000 they gave Kealoha.
Rushing to move on is always dangerous for the taxpaying public — and often for officials seeking to evade scrutiny, as well.
Which segues us to another kind of scrutiny evasion by the Hawaii Legislature, the epicenter of repeated mistakes.
Senate President Ron Kouchi and House Speaker Nadine Nakamura last week quietly locked in 44% raises to $114,348 for their members, issuing muted announcements that they won’t hold public hearings or a vote on a Republican resolution to reject the raises proposed by the state Salary Commission.
Doing nothing means the massive hikes automatically kick in next year for our part-time lawmakers as the economy sinks from the craziness in Washington. They follow a pattern of big legislative raises at economically inopportune times, such as 33% during the Great Recession.
Salary Commission members told Honolulu Civil Beat that state judges badly needed raises, and since their raises are tied to those of legislators and state executives, the judges lifted all boats.
All boats except cash-strapped taxpayers, who are hostage to economic chaos and frustrated they can’t strike back against oversize raises because of campaign finance laws that protect incumbents with lavish special-interest money.
Now so richly paid, lawmakers will cling to their jobs more than ever and be even less willing to pass reforms that would bring them more competition.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
