The University of Hawaii’s chief financial officer notified legislators earlier this month that they will no longer be automatically receiving free annual parking passes for the Manoa campus.
In a February 11, 2019 letter addressed to House Speaker Scott Saiki, Senate President Ron Kiuchi, and all legislators, Kalbert Young said the State Ethics Commission had advised that the practice of providing free parking to all legislators would appear to violate the state ethics code.
Instead, the university will provide day passes to legislators or staff with official business on the campus and, after further review, consider annual passes for those whose jobs require very frequent visits to the campus.
Ethics Commission director Daniel Gluck had earlier advised the university that “a significant number” of the passes were being used for personal purposes rather than official business.
In a letter to UH General Counsel Carrie Okinawa, Gluck wrote:
While these passes are clearly marked as being non-transferable and for business purposes only, our further understanding is that a significant number of pass-holders use these passes to receive free parking at sporting events; to allow family members to park for free while attending classes; or otherwise to avoid paying parking fees for non-business purposes. We believe that current state employees, legislators, and board/commission members who use these passes for personal use – that is, to attend sporting events or to allow family members to use the passes to avoid paying parking fees- may be running afoul ofthe Ethics Code, Hawai’i Revised Statutes (“HRS”) chapter 84.
The matter came to the attention of the commission during hearings last year when the Board of Regents approved a plan to increase parking rates.
Written public testimony was submitted challenging the issuance of free passes to regents, former regents, and legislators, among others, and during this process, a complaint was made with the Hawai’i State Ethics Commission regarding the University’s practice of providing free annual parking passes. The State Ethics Commission subsequently informed UH in writing that it should cease issuing annual parking passes as a matter of course to entire categories of State officials.
But the practice of giving legislators free parking or other benefits without regard of whether they were needed and used only for official business has come up publicly repeatedly over the years, and the ethics commission has consistently cautioned lawmakers against accepting such benefits, and advised agencies to cease such practices.
The correspondence did not identify how long UH has provided parking passes to all legislators before receiving this latest ethics commission warning.
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I once asked a retired faculty member what benefits conveyed with the status “emeritus”? He said it gave him “a hunting license” to find an on-campus parking space.
Anonymous is exactly right. As soon as you graduate UH you lose your library card access also and other campus privileges. Its one of the reasons why most of the books in the UH library collect dust. The average 19 year old undergrad doesn’t read them and the researchers or community members that would like to aren’t allowed to check them out.
The last time I thought about this situation, people in the community could apply for a UH library card, for a fee. I haven’t looked to see if this is still the case.
Yes.
http://manoa.hawaii.edu/library/services/borrow-renew-request/borrowing-privileges-and-access/
I’d be interested to know what other perks the legislators have been granted.
Maninini perks like free UH parking are obviously not necessary but make some folks feel important. They have annual office slush funds to cover incidental expenses. Improperly allowing their kids or others to use the privilege is the kind of routine abuse of power that petty politicians who are in the mix for all the wrong reasons seem to consider an entitlement, along with hiring relatives, buying vehicles with campaign funds for mostly personal use, etc. etc. etc.
You mean “Ronald Kouchi” and “Carrie Okinaga”. Aside from spelling, I do have an UH “community” library card and there are free UH classes for seniors. However, UH has profound “access” issues (parking et al) — this affects seniors leveraging classes all the way to Bishop Street interacting with UH faculty and researchers (how many Hawaii Business 250 firms have UH faculty as Board members — but even more profound is the lack of R & D at Hawaii firms for new product development and innovation).
Ian, I wrote that public testimony but no where in it suggested “significant” misuse by legislators. My real concern is the internal entities at UH who allow individuals to take “emeritus” regent titles when they are done with their terms and free parking for the rest of their lives. Ca-Ching. That’s about a $600-700 value for years. Mind you they have no regard for continuing to jack up the prices for parking costs for the students and employees while they’ve taken care of themselves forever. Employees have to pay for the cost of repairs and maintenance to parking areas through our ever increasing parking fees while these individuals have maintained their free pass program. The admin seems to have used this move to pin this mainly on the legislature. I can only guess it is to deter attention away from campus and put the focus on downtown. You fell for the bait. If you’re gonna write about it, look closer to home.
Thanks for that info. I think it was the ethics commission that ended up focusing on members of the legislature and other public officials.