A retired Hawaii Supreme Court associate justice is among the nominees being considered to fill one of four vacancies on the University of Hawaii Board of Regents created by resignations over the state’s financial disclosure law.
Simeon Acoba Jr. — who turned 70, the mandatory retirement age for judges, earlier this year — is one of five names the UH Candidate Advisory Council presented to Gov. Neil Abercrombie to fill a Honolulu seat on the board.
Before being appointed to the high court in 2000, Acoba was an associate judge on the Intermediate Court of Appeals and a Circuit Court judge before that. He currently lectures at UH’s William S. Richardson School of Law.
Other finalists for the seat are Peter Adler, a planner and mediator; Maralyn Kurshals, a former Board of Education member who retired from the state Department of Health; attorney and certified public accountant Michael McEnerney; and Russel Nagata, who previously served as the state comptroller and as a Honolulu District Court judge.
The interim appointee would serve out the remaining three years of former regent John Dean’s term.
Dean, along with former West Hawaii regent Carl Carlson, Kauai regent Tom Shigemoto and Maui regent Saedene Ota, resigned over the summer from the university’s 15-member board. They cited privacy concerns over a new state law that added members of the Board of Regents to the list of public officials whose financial interests are disclosed to the public.
The nominees for the Hawaii County seat on the board are Wayne Higaki, chief development officer for North Hawaii Community Hospital; Peter Hoffman, former Hawaii County Council member and retired Army colonel; and Hawaii island attorney Roy Vitousek III.
The appointee would serve out the remainder of Carlson’s term, which runs through June 2016.
The candidates for the Maui County seat are Sherrilee Dodson, executive director of Habitat for Humanity Maui; business development consultant Anders Lyons; and Helen Nielsen, a field representative for U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz.
The interim appointee would serve out the remaining year of Ota’s term.
David Iha, one of the nominees for the board’s Kauai County seat, worked for the University of Hawaii in several capacities, including as acting budget director, budget and accounting officer for the community college system, and director of administrative services at Kauai Community College.
Iha previously served as executive administrator and secretary of the Board of Regents from 1998 until his retirement in 2006.
The other two Kauai candidates are Dr. Dileep Bal, the state Health Department’s district health officer for Kauai; and retired professor and researcher Klaus Keil, who previously headed the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and served as interim dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, both at UH-Manoa.
The appointment would be for the remainder of Shigemoto’s term, which runs through June 2017.
Once Abercrombie makes his selections, the appointments will require confirmation by the state Senate.
