Hawaii County Finance Director Deanna Sako was cleared Wednesday of any wrongdoing in Mayor Billy Kenoi’s misuse of his county-issued credit card, while the county Board of Ethics reopened a case against Kenoi it had deferred pending an investigation by the state attorney general.
Hawaii County Finance Director Deanna Sako was cleared Wednesday of any wrongdoing in Mayor Billy Kenoi’s misuse of his county-issued credit card, while the county Board of Ethics reopened a case against Kenoi it had deferred pending an investigation by the state attorney general.
The Ethics Board is now in disagreement about whether it should continue its investigation into Kenoi’s pCard use or wait for Attorney General Doug Chin to complete his criminal investigation. The Attorney General’s Office recently has been tight-lipped about the progress of the case.
Member Douglass Adams said the Ethics Board is looking at a very narrow field of allegations and should be able to proceed with its work.
“If we defer, we’re foreclosing on our ability to investigate,” Adams said.
But member Ken Goodenow, an attorney, disagreed. He said Kenoi has a right to a trial that’s not prejudiced by Ethics Board actions.
“Whatever you think the mayor has done or how horrible it may be, he deserves a fair trial,” Goodenow said. “Any decision we make is going to impact a jury trial, if there is one, and everyone deserves a fair trial.”
The ethics complaint by Kapaau resident Lanric Hyland and the attorney general investigation followed a report by Big Island newspapers in March that Kenoi routinely used his card for personal expenses, as well as some campaign expenses. He generally reimbursed the county for his purchases within a few months, but the practice is contrary to state purchasing laws.
After the newspapers revealed he used his card at hostess bars and to purchase a pricey surfboard and bicycle, Kenoi reimbursed the county for an additional $31,113 of the $129,581 he charged during his tenure.
The board ultimately agreed to postpone a decision until its Sept. 9 meeting to give notice to Kenoi and his attorneys.
Sako was cleared after her attorney, Brian De Lima, told the board she began as finance director in January, while the allegations stem from the previous years of Kenoi’s term. Sako, who was deputy finance director before her promotion, was not the pCard administrator as deputy, he said.
“The mayor is the mayor. He’s the top administrative officer,” De Lima said. “The mayor is responsible for his own purchasing card. The finance director is a subordinate of the mayor.”
The Ethics Board has no jurisdiction over former officers and employees.
Deputy Managing Director Randy Kurohara also was cleared. While he has authority over the staff in the Mayor’s Office, he doesn’t have authority over the mayor, said De Lima, speaking on behalf of Kurohara’s attorney, Robert Kim.
Kenoi and Sako also were charged in the ethics complaint of violating the county ethics code provision requiring all people be treated in a “courteous, fair and impartial manner,” as well as the state Uniform Information Practices Act when they thwarted West Hawaii Today’s repeated attempts to obtain credit card statements that are public records under Hawaii law.
The newspaper submitted seven requests for pCard statements between December 2009 and March of this year. The county responded to the first few requests with summaries rather than the actual statements and delayed responding to later requests. It wasn’t until the newspaper, obtaining one month’s statement from an alternate source, broke the story about Kenoi using his pCard for personal expenses, that the county released the records in April.
“It is hardly an understatement that the conduct of Mayor William Kenoi has shaken the confidence of many citizens in the integrity of county government, and Ms. Sako must accept her share of responsibility for that loss of confidence,” Hyland said, adding Sako and her predecessor, former Finance Director Nancy Crawford, “aided and abetted his misuse of the card — his ongoing commission of the misdemeanor offense of misapplication of entrusted property and theft — over a period of years, from December 2008 through March 2015.”
Goodenow, meanwhile, appeared to take Chin to task for his comments quoted in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in May that there was no reason the Ethics Board couldn’t complete its work before a criminal investigation is complete. In fact, Chin said in the article, that’s the more common approach.
“Any attorney involved in an investigation of someone is obligated to refrain from making comments about anything that could have prejudicial pretrial publicity,” Goodenow said. “This is not an administrative license revocation matter.”
Email Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.