Tag Archives: Clayton Hee

Senator Hee amends remaining financial disclosures

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Senator Clayton Hee has submitted an additional amendment to his financial disclosure statements filed with the State Ethics Commission.

In a May 31, 2011 letter addressed to commission director Les Kondo, Hee refers to “inadvertent omissions previously filed.”

The amendments to be applied to Hee’s disclosure statements for 2006 to 2009 now list his own legislative salary, his wife’s business income, and her 100% ownership of her own business, Lynne Waters Communications.

According to state business registration records, Lynne Waters was also a director of two nonprofits during all or part of the period covered by these reports, Kick Start Karate (headed by Lee Donahue) and Hawaii Alliance for Arts Education. If this is the same Lynne Waters, these positions should have been disclosed by Hee as well.

Interestingly, according to the disclosure statements, Hee did not own any interest in business, have any outside income from consulting activities, any stocks valued at more than $5,000, and did not serve as an officer of any community organizations at any time during the period covered by these reports.

Yet his campaign literature described Hee, the candidate, as a business owner and consultant. Misleading? You decide.

Senator Hee: “I made a mistake”

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Senator Clayton Hee’s empty financial disclosures got a mention yesterday in the Star-Advertiser’s “Political Radar” blog.

Hee put a smiley face on the issue, and Reporter Derrick DePledge got the comment.

“I made a mistake. I take full responsibility for it. As soon as I was notified of it, I corrected it immediately,” the senator said in an email. “It was human error, and I’m a human being. I apologize for my error.”

A mistake? Well, he made the mistake several times back in 2008 by checking off the boxes claiming to have no sources of income or business connections. Those mistakes were casually repeated in 2009. In 2010. And again in 2011.

Trying to write this off as “human error” is quite a stretch. That’s being quite prone to error.

Hee’s real mistake was assuming that he didn’t need to bother filling out the forms properly by reporting the information required by law.

True, Hee did file an amended return as soon as it became an issue. So far, though, the earlier reports for 2008-2010 have not been amended to provide full disclosure.

It should be noted that the Ethics Commission quickly responded to criticism and now has both Hee’s original 2011 disclosure and the amended version online, although its web site is running very, very slowly, painfully so.

DePledge reports it will be up to the Ethics Commission to determine whether any further action will be taken.

By the way, the state’s business registration records lists The Cowboy Company as a trade name registered by Hee in 1989. It expired on September 5, 1990.

Senator Hee amends latest financial disclosure, questions remain

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Senator Clayton Hee has filed a new personal financial disclosure statement which now includes additional sources of income and other information previously omitted. For years, Hee has filed reports that simply reported “None” for most categories of interests for himself and his wife, shielding his financial interests from public scrutiny and apparently flouting state law in the process.

The omissions became apparent when compared to the disclosure filed independently by his wife, Lynne Waters, after she was appointed to a high-level public relations position in the University of Hawaii system earlier this year.

Senator Hee’s filing of apparently false reports was detailed here on Saturday.

The latest document appeared on the State Ethics Commission web site yesterday.

The senator’s latest disclosure statement, dated May 23, amends an earlier disclosure statement filed just two weeks earlier, but is not identified as an amendment. The earlier report, in which the senator certified that he had no additional items to report, has now disappeared.

Although now removed from the Ethics Commission web site, a copy of Hee’s original report can be found here.

It is not clear whether the commission routinely allows previously certified statements to disappear and be replaced by amended documents without public notice, or whether the previously filed report is still available for inspection at the commission’s office even though no longer available online.

It appears Senator Hee relied on the information disclosed by his wife and simply copied it into his new form. His disclosures filed in 2008, 2009, and 2010 have not yet been amended and still claim none of the income or other interests disclosed in his latest report.

Also a question mark are Senator Hee’s own outside business interests, if any. His own campaign materials described Hee as a “business owner and consultant”, but no such business interests or associated income are reflected in his available disclosures filed with the ethics commission.

The disclosures filed by Hee and Waters also illustrate a significant shortcoming of the disclosure process. Waters reports earning between $50,000 and $100,000 from her private consulting business, but ethics policies do not require disclosure of clients, so the public is left to wonder whether any special interests might have hired Waters in order to influence her husband in his official role as state senator.

Of course, this problem is not unique to Hee and Waters. Elected officials who also own or operate businesses, or hold real estate or insurance licenses, are also able to shield their client lists from public view.

Also unknown at this point is whether Hee will face any sanctions or penalties for the years of filing false and incomplete financial disclosures.