If we did not have Marion Higa, the state auditor, I don’t know if we could invent someone with so much organized persistence. So let’s just appreciate the work of the auditor and her staff.
Just released is an audit of her audits. As you might expect, the state has not done a bang-up job in following Higa’s previous audit advice.
For state bureaucrats, an audit is an external evaluation that is never fun. If those being audited pay attention, everyone, especially taxpayers’ benefit.
The usual audit goes like this:
"We were asked to audit the state supply of spoons. We found that no one knows how many spoons the state owns; the state also doesn’t know where the spoons are kept and can’t provide the names of the last person to see the spoons.
"The auditor recommends that the state get a big drawer and clearly label it ‘Spoons.’ Keys should be given to people responsible for handing out the spoons and you really ought to count the spoons."
In Higa’s most recent effort, she reports on three audits from 2008 that all had critical remarks.
It was in 2008 that the Legislature changed the state law to require a follow-up report on recommendations from previous audits.
An audit of the Molokai Irrigation System found that the 1.4 billion-gallon water system, taken over by the state Agriculture Department, was "a broken system" and the state "had done little to learn about the problems or create a plan to address them."
The happy ending was that the state implemented most of the recommendations.
Not-so-happy a result comes of the audit of the school system’s Hawaiian studies program. Higa cited "vague guidelines and weak oversight" contributing to the program diverting resources "to purposes with little or no connection to Hawaiian education."
Higa remains unconvinced that the Department of Education is getting the program in order.
"The recommendations at the department and program levels remain open, with little progress made," she reports.
The big salvo, however, is saved for two audits of the Hawaii Superferry fiasco. The state attorney general is blamed for an "extensive and intrusive review" of Higa’s audit that delayed its completion, Higa says.
As for the battle to get the ferry sailing, Higa said the state "took advantage of the state’s flawed environmental impact statement law and rules" to bypass environmental review.
"Efforts supporting Hawaii Superferry may have compromised the state’s environmental policy," Higa’s audits concluded.
Things got so bad that when the state Environmental Council recommended rule changes, then-Gov. Linda Lingle refused to sign the rules and the council essentially gave up and for a while disbanded, noting "this administration does not have much of an appetite for dealing with these rules."
Higa summed up Lingle’s Superferry problem: "The administration that utilized a lax exemption process to expedite Superferry preparations also impeded efforts to strengthen that flawed process."
Finally, there is the issue of the work the state did to help Hawaii Superferry. It improved the Maui harbor and built three barges to be used as loading ramps. About $40 million in public bonds were sold for that. Now the state will owe more than $20 million in interest by 2028.
The three barges are rusting away in Honolulu Harbor. To fix up and maintain the barges would cost $277,500 per year, Higa notes. But there is no way to use them or sell them.
"Should we be spending more money on something that officially has no value to us?" a state administrator told the auditor’s office.
Sad end to a project filled with more potential than thought. As Higa would remind us, always count the spoons.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
