At the same time the University of Hawaii’s Board of Regents is deciding whether to hit students on the Manoa campus with a new $50 per semester athletic fee, gift disclosures filed with the State Ethics Commission show top university administrators have been getting free season tickets to sports of their choosing.
Here are some of the administrators taking advantage of the free tickets, along with salaries drawn from the university’s annual salary report to the Legislature. The VP for Research (salary: $222,720) got two basketball season tickets, the VP for academic planning & policy (salary: $284,808) got football tickets, the university’s general counsel and VP for legal affairs (salary: $218,784) took a pair of free season tickets for women’s volleyball, football, men’s basketball, men’s volleyball, and baseball.
There are more. The associate VP for CIP (salary: $210,384), accepted free season tickets for football, women’s volleyball, men’s volleyball, baseball, and men’s basketball. The UH VP for budget & finance (salary: $260,208) reported receiving three football season tickets, two season tickets for women’s volleyball.
None of the top administrators from the UH Manoa campus, including Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw and the bevy of assistant chancellors, appeared on the Ethics Commission’s list of those filing gift disclosures as of yesterday.
Meanwhile, the legislature’s decision to cancel traditional festivities on the opening day of the 2010 session, along with the sluggish economy, appear to be reflected in fewer gifts to legislators this year.
A quick look at gift disclosures filed by elected and appointed officials, board and commission members, and state employees shows a general decline in gifts since 2008.
Comparisons are difficult because of a range of reporting standards are used by those filing reports. The law technically only requires disclosure of gifts valued at $200 or more from a single source, whether that’s an individual item or a cumulative total. But a number of legislators report all gifts received regardless of value, providing the public with a more complete picture of gift-giving practices.
Rep. Roy Takumi has been a leader in reporting all gifts received by his office. In 2008, Takumi’s report consisted of six pages and a total of about 100 itemized gifts. Takumi’s 2010 report was just under 4 full pages and listed approximately 60 gifts, including official travel to meetings of the National Conference of State Legislators and the National Governor’s Association.
Reports filed by House Speaker Calvin Say show a similar decline. In 2008, Say’s report ran over 12 pages, with about 12 entries per page, for approximately 140 gifts. In 2010, the number of gifts reported by the Speaker fell to about 90.
Other disclosures raise questions.
Gov. Linda Lingle, for example, reports receiving only 10 gifts during the past year, including a trip to the west coast paid for by Lt. Gov. Aiona’s campaign, and a hotel room paid by Charles Djou’s campaign, apparently on the same trip. Aiona reports a single gift, apparently the entry fee for the Sony Dream Cup Pro Am golf tournament.
There’s no gift disclosure from Lingle’s chief of staff, Barry Fukunaga, on the Ethics Commisison web site.
In addition, some UH officials report expenditures from various protocol accounts (see engineering dean Peter Crouch and UH President MRC Greenwood, for example). Do the governor, lt. governor, or any other officials have similar protocol accounts? I wonder.
It’s too bad that Lingle-Aiona don’t match legislative leaders Say and Colleen Hanabusa in reporting and disclosing more than the legally required minimum.
And that’s if you take these reports at face value and accept that no local lobbyist or interest group, over the course of a full year, provided gifts worth a total of $200 to the governor, lt. gov, or their top staff. That’s lunches, dinners, golfing, benefit tickets, sporting events, UH sports, etc. It’s possible, but I have doubts.
Want to dig around and find your own goodies?
Here’s a link to the annual gift disclosures filed with the State Ethics Commission. As you find interesting items, please return and share them as comments. The more the merrier!
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Hi Ian, Does anyone find it odd that Aiona paid for Lingle’s vacation? Is that a way to ‘play governor’ and does that affect his pension? And no disclosure from Hinshaw…Intrinsically surprised? Free tickets anyone? And why are the administrators receiving freebies while making big bucks and having the poor students pay $248.30 in fees per semester for undergrads (which may or may not include a “build a gym @ campus center fee”…follow the money… kickbacks to corrupt campus center officials) and pending another fee of $50 for athletics due Spring 2011 (if passed by the Board of Regents). Can you say morally debased officials?. Aloha.
I would guess that Lingle went to raise $$ for Aiona’s campaign.
And, yes, if I were a student facing a big new athletic fee, I would be loudly calling for UH administrators to be paying for their own tickets!
If a UH administrator had it written into their contract that they would get season tickets, I’d have no problem with it. But if its after the fact they shouldnt get them without paying and they make much more money than the average family in Hawaii so they can afford it more than most.
As I reviewed Frank Fasi’s op-ed in the January 9, 1985 issue of Midweek, the words “self-annointed” appears to describe people of your ilk. Seriously, where are the shirts?
any particular reason to quote a 25 year old editorial, or to read one?
What exactly are you trying to say?
It sounds like you are saying Ian and others should shut up and stop keeping an eye on public officials and the gifts and perks they receive. What would be “pono” about that?
Pono, you “self-clicked” your way to this site. Don’t let the mouse hit you on the way out.
I think some took offense, but I keyed on Pono’s last sentence about the shirts, which I fully appreciate. I didn’t take it as a hostile comment at all!
Pono,
You got a link to the Fasi Op-Ed?
I am trying to track down his comment about “environmental kooks,” but Google yields nothing.
Anyone?
Kudos to legislators like Takumi and Say who err on the side of accountability and transparency.
Slom admits in his gift disclosure that Jeff Mikulina gave him pot!
http://hawaii.gov/ethics/giftdisc/2010/legs/sloms10gd.pdf
page 2
Luckily, he also received some chocolate macadamia nuts and cookies the same day.
You got me on that one :=) it shows the power of words.
There is a double standard. When will this stop?
http://www4.honolulu.gov/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-101902/55mb7957.pdf
There’s nothing magical about fixing this. Follow what Sam’s Club does. If you’re one of their vendors or hoping to be one, you cannot give gifts, period. You cannot entertain anyone, you can’t even meet buyers away from the cubicle under TV monitors where business is conducted. Only the resolve is lacking when it comes to public officials. We don’t need TV monitors, but we also don’t need all the sucking up that goes on in this political climate. Just say “no”.
Excellent point.
I find it galling that the Governor used the need for government transparency as a grounds for vetoing several bills while she while she is anything but transparent in her own gift disclosure.
Isn’t what’s good for the goose good for the gooney-bird?
Do they get to give the tickets to their friends if they don’t use them?
I’d be interested more so in who actually used the tickets.
Agree. Or worse, if they sold them! The scalpers would love to get hands on these sweets seats.
The community gets what the community wants and allows. If you act like sheep, you will be sheared.
Wailau, I hear your point. But I don’t know if we’re at the point like some legislatures (Minnesota, for example) where ANY gift is banned. So if a legislator were to go to a school event, a lei would be refused.
In my mind, it’s disclosure that’s the key.
Ian, about an hour ago, I posted a comment on Lee Cataluna’s piece on the $50 fee at the Star-Ad website. It related your scoop on the season tickets report, offered some appropriate comments, and gave a link to this page.
Several other posts have gone up there in the interim, but not mine. Perhaps Star-Ad “moderation” includes screening out plusses to the competition?
I think Ian and the regular readers would have recognized my comment as an inside joke that alludes to a previous post by Ian regarding the revenue potential for such shirts.
This notion was in response to a post by a perturbed reader who described Ian as “self-anointed”.
My “sef-annointed” comment was not an insult, but rather validation that Ian has been serving the public’s interest for over two decades.
If there are two things I regret regarding my previous post, it’s that I spend too much time reading this blog and have an exceptional memory.
You can never spend too much time here!
Okay. Sorry, I missed the joke.
Carol, it’s hard to argue your statement. However, I’d add that: If you’ve been schooled to behave as sheep, it’ll require a remarkable transformation to behave as anything OTHER than sheep.
http://islandnotes.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/education-for-non-dummies/
http://hawaii.gov/ethics/giftdisc/2010/empl/hinshawv10gd.pdf
correct me if I’m wrong, Ian, but you said Hinshaw didn’t submit gifts to the commission. It appears she actually did, but in an attachment, which you can see if you scroll down. Maybe that came out more recently.
Either way, it shows that she got $1,980 worth of gifts from UH athletics…how is that possible?
At the time of my original entry, July 12, the chancellor had not yet filed her gift disclosure.
It was dated July 14, two days later, and was noted here.
http://ilind.net/2010/07/24/few-uh-officials-disclose-protocol-spending/
I’m not sure what you mean…”how is that possible?”
Oh I merely meant it in context. It seems strange to me that people making upwards of 200k would lobby the regents for an athletics fee when they get free tickets. I agreed with the general sentiment of your piece.
As to the Regents, my advisor over here tells me you reported on that as well. I just started reading your site so I apologize if I’m not up on everything….although from reading previous posts, it seems like being up on everything can get you in trouble too! Yikes. Watch out for T-Shirts. j/k