Category Archives: Legislature

Kim takes little time in announcing Senate organization

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The State Senate didn’t waste any time agreeing on a new leadership slate, with Donna Mercado Kim retaining the position as president.

Will Espero replaces Ron Kouchi as vice-president. Kouchi was named vice-chair of the powerful Ways & Means Committee. Kalani English takes over as majority leader, bumping Brickwood Galuteria, who no longer appears in the leadership lineup.

Key committee chairs are Jill Tokuda, who moves from education chair to take over as chair of Ways & Means, Gil Keith-Agaran takes over the committee formerly chaired by Clayton Hee (Judiciary and Labor), Laura Thielen (Water and Land), and Michelle Kidani (Education).

You can read the Senate press release here.

Legislative cuts to UH budget contributed to the “Mess in Manoa”

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Hawaii News Now posted several documents last night that shed additional light on the Mess in Manoa, including UH President David Lassner’s evaluation of Manoa Chancellor Tom Apple that rated his performance “unsatisfactory,” as well as two letters from Apple to Lassner, one billed as a direct rebuttal to the evaluation.

There’s a lot of information to be mined from these documents.

A brief excerpt from Apple’s rebuttal letter raises a big question for gubernatorial candidate David Ige, who has chaired the Senate Ways & Means Committee for the past several years.

Apple put the challenge he faced in balancing the UH Manoa budget into a larger context by describing the decline in legislative funding. He wrote:

As you know, since 2009, the Legislature has cut about $75M in General funds from Manoa’s budget. Tuition funds have been used to replace a great deal of the lost funds so a very large part of our faculty and staff salaries are now derived from tuition funds, as opposed to General funds.

And the Board of Regents apparent willingness to suspend tuition increases that had been scheduled to kick in over the next two years just increases budget pressures.

Much of the overall legislative cut came while Ige was the chair of WAM.

And those cuts, in part, triggered Apple’s efforts to scale back the funding going to the cancer center and medical school, as part of broader campus belt-tightening.

Apple’s letters make clear that he believes it was the behind-the-scenes battles over funding of those two units that led to his dismissal.

To what extent did the legislature’s cuts to the Manoa budget contribute to the current mess? And what was the role of the WAM chairman in approving those cuts?

It’s late in the current campaign to be asking these questions, but it would be most interesting to see them debated in the days ahead.

UH Regents reportedly to oppose new financial disclosure requirements

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The University of Hawaii’s Board of Regents is poised to issue a unanimous call for Governor Abercrombie to veto a bill that would make the financial disclosure statements of its members available for public inspection, according to a story by Nanea Kalani in this morning’s Star-Advertiser.

SB2682 would add members of the BOR and more than a dozen other boards and commissions to the list of those filing public financial disclosures.

The regents are apparently quite unhappy about this possibility.

UH?regents Chairman John Holzman said the board is drafting a letter asking the governor to veto the measure. The draft letter says some regents have indicated they might resign if it becomes law.

“I hope it can reflect the unanimous view of the board,” Holzman told fellow regents at their monthly meeting Thursday. “It is, I think, a very important statement that we have to make.”

Regent John Dean, president and CEO of Central Pacific Financial Corp. and Central Pacific Bank, said he’ll “for sure” resign.

“Just for the record, and for everyone, obviously, I would resign. I’m willing to share my personal information with the Ethics Commission, but I have no interest in sharing it with the entire state of Hawaii,” Dean, whose term on the board runs through 2017, said at the meeting.

I don’t think this is going to play well, especially given the BOR’s past reputation for excessive secrecy, and the accusations of favoritism and conflicts in its autonomous procurement process. And I hope attorney Jeff Portnoy, who has been a rather outspoken proponent of transparency and openness, and has represented various news media in litigation challenging government secrecy, will help his fellow regents understand the reasons to make disclosures public.

Current state law requires public financial disclosures by elected officials and candidate for public office, along with the directors and deputies of state departments and certain agencies, including OHA and the state library system.

University officials already filing public financial disclosures are the president, vice presidents and assistant vice presidents, along with campus chancellors and provosts.

Here’s how the Ethics Commission responded in testimony to the sentiment apparently shared by members of the BOR.

The Commission is aware that the members of most of the boards and commissions identified above serve without pay and that allowing the public to view their financial interests may discourage some from volunteering to serve; however, the Commission strongly suggests that there are certain responsibilities and obligations to the public that members must accept in exchange for the privilege and honor of serving. In light of the State Ethics Code‘s fundamental purpose — i.e., to foster public confidence in state government — the Commission believes that those individuals responsible for department policy and other state policies about which there is a significant public interest should be required to publicly disclose financial information from which the public can consider whether the member has a conflict of interest.

And it isn’t like the Board of Regents is being singled out by the bill, which would require similar disclosures by a long list of other key boards and commissions.

(A) The board of directors of the agribusiness development corporation established under section 163D-3;
(B) The board of agriculture established under section 26-16;
(C) The state ethics commission established under section 84-21;
(D) The Hawaii community development authority established under section 206E-3;
(E) The Hawaiian homes commission established under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, as amended, and section 26-17;
(F) The board of directors of the Hawaii housing finance and development corporation established under section 201H-3;
(G) The board of land and natural resources established under section 171-4;
(H) The state land use commission established under section 205-1;
(I) The legacy land conservation commission established under section 173A-2.4;
(J) The natural area reserves system commission established under section 195-6;
(K) The board of directors of the natural energy laboratory of Hawaii authority established under section 227D-2;
(L) The board of directors of the Hawaii public housing authority established under section 356D?3;
(M) The public utilities commission established under section 269-2; and
(N) The commission on water resource management established under section 174C-7.”

Rep. Cachola accused of diverting campaign funds to personal use

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Hawaii News Now reported last night that the Campaign Spending Commission wants state representative and former Honolulu City Council member, Romy Cachola, to repay $64,000 in campaign funds they believe were used to pay for personal expenses.

It’s a hefty sum, far beyond the $13,700 spent on meals that former councilman Rod Tam had to pay back in 2010.

According to Hawaii News Now, the misuse of funds goes back years.

In an eight-page complaint, the commission cited hundreds of questionable expenditures, including:

— $30,437 to purchase a Nissan SUV in 2008;

— $21,827 to gas, insure and keep the car running for nearly six years;

— $9,194 in food and beverage purchases;

— and, $2,774 in public relations expenses.

Pay special attention to the next part, which describes surveillance of Cachola for a week in January. It is not clear whether the legislature was in session at the time.

As part of the investigation, the commission placed Cachola under surveillance for a week back in January. Investigators for the Attorney General’s office tracked Cachola’s use of his SUV and found that none of his trips that week were campaign related.

Instead, Cachola was seen driving his car to a church and to his office at the state Capital. He also used the car to drive to the Honolulu Country Club twice.

The complaint filed against Cachola is the lead item on this morning’s Campaign Spending Commission agenda.