Category Archives: Ethics

When incomplete financial disclosures took down a state judge

4 Replies

The current controversy surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ failure to disclose significant financial interests reminded me that I wrote about a smaller scale, local version of this issue during my final year as an investigative reporter for the old Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The case involved a prominent state judge, District Court Judge David L. Fong, who was appointed a part-time per diem judge in 1981, and became a full-time district court judge in 1996. In July 2000, when my first story appeared, Fong was serving as chairman of the Hawaii State Trial Judges Association, and was an ex officio member of the Hawaii State Bar Association board of directors.

A tip several years earlier had triggered my initial interest in Fong’s financial disclosures. Yes, Hawaii judges are required to file annual financial disclosures which are public documents, as are those of elected officials, top appointed officials, and members of some boards and commissions. Back in those days, research into public records required digging through paper files rather than exercising your fingers and pulling up online copies, so it took me a while to research the situation and figure out what the issues were, then do more research.

My initial story was published July 6, 2020 (“Judge, wife profited from property’s ‘unsavory’ tenants/Their building housed hostess bars with alleged ties to drugs, prostitution“). This story reported that the couple had purchased a building on Sheridan Street that housed several hostess bars, but the property had not been included on the judge’s financial disclosure statement for several years. And although there were allegations of prostitution, drugs, and other illegal activities in their building, Judge Fong expressed ignorance, and said there was no appearance of impropriety on his part.

“‘What did that have to do with me?’ Fong responded, when asked about the prostitution arrests.”

Two days later, I reported that the Commission on Judicial Conduct had initiated an investigation of the matter.

A follow-up story focused on the issue of Fong’s failure to include many of his wife’s business ventures and income on his annual financial disclosures (“Judge didn’t report many of his wife’s business ties / David Fong says some omissions are oversights by him and some of her job titles are misleading“).

It took three years for District Judge David L. Fong to publicly disclose his wife’s 1991 purchase of a Sheridan Street building on the financial statement he filed annually with the Supreme Court.

The deal established his wife, Connie Yon Fong, as landlord for several hostess bars that were later accused of prostitution and drug dealing.

The delay in reporting is being examined by the Commission on Judicial Conduct after a Star-Bulletin story about the building.

But the transaction is just one of several delays and omissions in Fong’s annual financial statements involving interests held in his wife’s name. Under court rules, judges are required to disclose relevant interests held by themselves, a spouse or dependent child.

Fong took another three years to disclose his wife’s 51 percent interest in Liquor License Specialists Inc., formed to take over his former business as consultant and agent for bars and nightclubs, records show.

Other financial interests which have not been publicly disclosed, including $1 million in loans made to liquor-related businesses, are revealed in court records, documents filed at the Bureau of Conveyances, Liquor Commission files and state business registration records.

Fong says these unreported interests are immaterial, exempt from disclosure or nonexistent.

Connie Fong has declined to comment.

The deliberations of the Commission on Judicial Conduct are confidential, so the matter disappeared for another few years.

In the interim, Judge Fong’s term came to an end and he announced his retirement in October 2002.

It was later reported Fong retired only after he had been notified that his application for another term would not be approved by the Judicial Selection Commission.

In December 2003, the Hawaii Supreme Court “issued a rare public censure to a now-retired district judge for failing to disclose his wife’s financial interests while he was on the bench,” the Star-Bulletin reported.

Chief Justice Ronald Moon is-
sued the order of public cen-
sure Monday, nearly 3½ years
after the Commission on Judi-
cial Conduct began investigat-
ing District Judge David L.
Fong’s financial interests. Fong
retired in October 2002.

The inquiry apparently began
in July 2000 after a series of
Star-Bulletin articles.

In its order, the high court
also found that Fong was ‘
least aware” of alleged criminal
activity at a property owned by
his wife, Connie Yon Fong.

“Respondent Fong’s conduct
… cast his judicial office into
disrepute,” violated financial
disclosure requirements and
the judicial code that deals with
public perception, the order
said. However, “it appears that
Respondent Fong was highly re
spected and performed his du-
ties ably and conscientiously
during the time he served as a
per diem and full-time judge of
the District Court of the First
Circuit,” Moon said.

The censure was based on previously confidential “Stipulation of Facts,” and separate conclusions and recommendations, of the Commission on Judicial Conduct, which were submitted to the Supreme Court in July.

The court’s censure came just days before Christmas, a period during which news is sent to get buried.

The news came 2-1/2 years after the Star-Bulletin got a new owner, and I had been terminated in the process. Although reports about the censure did not credit my reporting by name, I still felt validated by the belated disciplinary action.

Checking out The Sunshine Blog

10 Replies

I’ve been enjoying reading Civil Beat’s “The Sunshine Blog” produced by the editorial board, which is billed as “Short takes, outtakes, observations and other stuff you should know about public information, government accountability and ethical leadership in Hawaii.”

To be honest, I disagree with just as much of what’s said there as I agree with.

Earlier this week, a Sunshine Blog post reported data on a study by the Civil Beat Law Center on the failure of the Office of Information Practices to produce timely decisions on appeals filed with OIP after an agency has turned down a request for access to a government record.

It’s now taking OIP director Cheryl Park and her staff more than three years to decide whether documents should be made available after an agency has denied a request.

“When lawsuits are faster, OIP is no longer serving the role that the Legislature intended for OIP to be an ‘expeditious’ place to resolve disputes about public records and open meetings,” the law center says on its website.

I doubt that the Law Center’s report drew much attention on its own, and these are data that the public needs to understand. The whole point of giving OIP the power to review agency decisions was to provide a timely alternative to going to court, where things can drag on interminably. But the Civil Beat Law Center’s cases over access to public records seem to take less time to resolve than OIP’s 2022 average of 795 days. This is the kind of thing where the Sunshine Law Blog shines.

The next section of the same post touts Civil Beat’s bill tracker, a useful tool for keeping track of legislative reform bills proposed by the “Foley Commisison” as the session progresses. So far, so good.

But then, briefly at least, it seems to me that the post goes off the rails.

But many of the other Foley commission bills (named for retired Judge Dan Foley, who chaired the commission) are advancing, at least in the House. The same goes for dozens of other Sunshine bills introduced by lawmakers, state agencies and others. The subject matter of the legislation includes lobbying reform, enhanced campaign finance reporting, establishing a class C felony offense of official misconduct and public financing of elections.

Whether the reform effort continues to make progress remains to be seen. So far, the Senate hasn’t shown much interest.

So, according to this post, many of the reform bills are moving “at least in the House,” although “the Senate hasn’t shown much interest.”

But wait. Did I miss something?

A quick look at CB’s own bill tracker shows all the 31 proposals recommended by the Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct, were introduced as House bills, without Senate companion bills.

So we’re talking Legislature 101–bills introduced in the House have to be considered and passed by the House before they are referred over to the Senate. That’s basic. None of the commission bills have been passed by the House yet, so none are pending in the Senate. No wonder “the Senate hasn’t shown much interest.” At least as far as the commission’s reform bills go, there’s apparently nothing for the Senate to be interested in yet, since none have yet passed the House.

First Decking, the deadline for decking bills for 3rd reading votes in the house where they originated, isn’t until Friday, and First Crossover, the deadline for passing House bills and to the Senate, and Senate bills to the house, is March 9.

Another item for the worry list

3 Replies

There are lots of things to worry about these days from the elections to international conflicts to the rise of domestic fascism, to…well, lots of things.

But this morning an unexpected new item was added to the worry list.

“Solar geoengineering.”

This is from a piece last week on the Lawfare Blog (“ The Case for Researching Solar Geoengineering”).

In a nutshell, solar geoengineering is the intentional modification of Earth’s atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back into space, with the goal of cooling temperatures on a regional or planetary scale. The most discussed and best understood of these techniques is stratospheric aerosol injection—the idea, basically, of using aircraft to release a thin “veil” of aerosols high up in the atmosphere to reflect away a small amount of sunlight.

Everyone agrees that dramatically reducing GHG emissions is essential to addressing climate change, but some see solar geoengineering as a sort of “bridge” to a zero-emissions world or, to use a different metaphor, an insurance policy in case the world cannot decarbonize quickly enough to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. For those who see climate change as a likely planetary emergency, geoengineering may provide a regrettable but necessary way to buy time to improve and commercialize decarbonization technologies, invest in new infrastructure, and, perhaps, prevent runaway warming.

This article reviews the legitimate concerns that are raised in response to the prospect of solar geoengineering.

But then it points out: “But a hotter world could become a more desperate world, and countries may reach for solar geoengineering no matter how little it has been studied or how few governing institutions are in place.”

Yikes! What could possible go wrong here?!

Is it lobbying or just schmoozing?

7 Replies

Legislators have been invited to attend a legislative “Meet & Greet Reception” this evening sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii. It is pitched to legislators as “an opportunity to meet with Hawaii’s business leaders.” The event is scheduled for Cafe Julia in downtown Honolulu starting with a cocktail reception at 5 pm.


Legislators are asked to register online for a $25 Legislator ticket “in order to be in compliance with the Ethics Committee….”

There’s nothing untoward or inappropriate about such meetings, but there is a question: Does this constitute lobbying? And do the costs to put on such an event have to be reported as lobbying expenditures in lobbyist disclosure reports required to be filed by the Chamber with the State Ethics Commission?

This appears to a regular Chamber event. In 2020, for example, it was held on January 16. I did a quick look at the lobbying expenditure report filed by the Chamber covering the January-February 2020. There do not appear to be any expenditures related to the event reported by the chamber, although the organization reported paying lobbyists $8,000 during the two-month period.

Continue reading →