West Maui Taxpayers Association
  • HOME
  • Olowalu Fire Station
  • WMTAPAC22
  • Affordable Housing
  • West Maui Lifesavers
  • Wall of Honor
  • Support WMTA
    • Membership - One Time Payment
    • Membership - Recurring Payment
    • Donations
    • Wills & Trusts
    • Charity Walk
  • Newsletter
  • Emergency Planning
  • News Blog
  • About Us
    • Goals & Objectives
    • Accomplishments
    • Board of Directors
    • WMTA vs WMIF
  • Contact
  • Subscribe

State Auditor Facing a Whack Job?

4/19/2021

0 Comments

 
WMTA Shares these commentaries, without taking a position unless otherwise noted, to bring information to our readers ​to view the archives of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii's commentary click here.
Picture
State Auditor Facing a Whack Job?
 
The House Speaker’s office recently released an unflattering report on the State Auditor. It faulted the Auditor’s Office for appointing executives without proper experience and said the move contributed to “delays and untimely reports,” and other actions that were “not in complete compliance” with the provisions of the Hawai’i Constitution governing that office. 

The House Speaker created the three-person working group that produced the report in a January 14, 2021, memo saying, “As you know, limited resources make it problematic for the State Auditor to address all outstanding issues and matters. Therefore, the findings of this group will assist the State Auditor in prioritizing its work and the scope of its work.”

But the findings of the working group didn’t seem to address prioritization and scope of work. Part of the report recounted interviews of disgruntled former employees, however, and apparently was calculated to give the impression that the current state auditor was personally argumentative and combative, was creating a toxic work environment, and was responsible for a sky-high personnel turnover rate.  Another part of the report gives the impression that the Auditor was less interested in finding out the truth and complying with generally accepted government accounting standards than he was interested in sensationalism, using his reports to create public spectacles.

Another part of the report spends lots of time reviewing the Auditor’s recent actions involving the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA).  After some recent and less than rosy revelations about OHA’s internal workings, the Legislature’s 2019 budget made $3 million of state funding contingent upon the State Auditor completing a “financial and management audit” of OHA. When the Auditor’s staff began field work, they requested access to minutes of trustee meetings containing the details of legal advice sought and received by the trustees in those meetings. OHA said that these parts of the minutes were protected by attorney-client privilege. The Auditor replied by saying he couldn’t finish his report without them and stopped work. That put the brakes on the $3 million, and understandably generated some hard feelings. The report then slams the Auditor for not being impartial, for violating various auditing standards, and failing to comply with the law calling for the report.   (Some of these criticisms are very much debatable.)

The conclusion and recommendation section of the report then fault the Auditor for being non-productive for various reasons including those outlined above, and recommended that the Legislature should require the State Auditor to have at least five years of governmental audit experience (which the incumbent apparently lacks), that the same should be required of the office’s executive level managers and leaders, that the Legislature should take steps to “preclude the State Auditor from diverting from the specific issue and concerns of the Legislature,” that the Legislature should require the Auditor to terminate its litigation with OHA, and more.

It’s hard to see how these findings and recommendations lead to better prioritization and scope of work.  Rather, the report looks more like a “whack job” — a collection of facts and arguments to justify someone’s dismissal or discharge from their position.  Apparently, the Auditor did something to get under the Speaker’s skin, and it’s time to exact retribution.  Our state constitution provides that the Auditor may be fired for cause by a two-thirds vote of the members of the House and Senate in joint session.  Are these findings enough?  Will they be sufficient to persuade the Senate to go along?

Over the years, I haven’t agreed with everything the Auditor has said and done.  Far from it.  But at least his office’s work has led to the discovery and exposure of many facts that the public needed to know and had a right to know.  It’s understandable that those exposures would lead some to press legislative leadership to deliver a whack job.  We would hope that cooler heads ultimately prevail, and that any decision on the State Auditor is made after due consideration of his service to the people of Hawaii.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    RSS Feed


    If you wish to further discuss blog posts, please contat our office directly or contact us via Contact page.

    Categories

    All
    Affordable Housing & Homelessness
    Board
    Capital Improvements
    Charity Walk
    Commentaries
    Community Events
    Community Resources
    CON
    COVID 19
    Educational
    Emergency Planning
    Health & Safety
    HHARP
    Housing
    Infrastructure In West Maui
    In The News
    Kapalua Airport Runway Lights
    Kapalua Coastal Trail
    Lahaina Bypass
    Legislature Newsletters
    LLC
    Long Range Transportation Plan 2040
    Long-Range Transportation Plan 2040
    Makila
    MAUI CANCER CENTER
    Maui Cancer Center Llc
    Maui County
    Maui County Budget
    Maui County Dept Of Environmental Management
    Maui County - Dept Of Water
    Maui Destination Management Plan
    Press
    Public Safety In West Maui
    Real Property Tax
    Recycling Info
    TAT
    Tax
    Tourism
    Traffic & Roadways
    Transportation
    Video
    Vote
    Voting
    West Maui Community Plan
    West Maui Hospital
    West Maui Skate Park
    WMTA Annual Meeting
    WMTA Breakfast Events
    WMTA Candidates Night
    WMTA Disaster Preparedness
    WMTA Fundraisers
    WMTA Hot Topics
    Wmta Hot Topics Replay
    WMTA Membership
    WMTA PAC
    WMTA Sunset Sail
    WMTA Whale Watch

Quick Links: 

Home

News

About Us

Wall of Honor

Newsletter

Support WMTA
Emergency Planning

Contact

Copyright © 2021
Photo used under Creative Commons from wolfsavard
  • HOME
  • Olowalu Fire Station
  • WMTAPAC22
  • Affordable Housing
  • West Maui Lifesavers
  • Wall of Honor
  • Support WMTA
    • Membership - One Time Payment
    • Membership - Recurring Payment
    • Donations
    • Wills & Trusts
    • Charity Walk
  • Newsletter
  • Emergency Planning
  • News Blog
  • About Us
    • Goals & Objectives
    • Accomplishments
    • Board of Directors
    • WMTA vs WMIF
  • Contact
  • Subscribe