State briefs for March 30

Visitor spending, traveler numbers up in February

HONOLULU (AP) — The Hawaii Tourism Authority says average daily spending by visitors jumped 11.5 percent last month compared to the year before.

The state agency said Wednesday spending by travelers topped $47.8 million per day in February.

For the entire month, visitor spending increased 7.7 percent. But a comparison of monthly spending between the two years is misleading because there were 29 days in February in 2016 because of the leap year.

The agency says there were more than 230,000 visitors in Hawaii on any given day last month. That’s up nearly 6 percent from the number last year.

HPD gets help from PR firm

HONOLULU (AP) — The Honolulu Police Department recently ended its one-year contract with a public relations firm with a new departmentwide communications plan that seeks to address the agency’s public perception problems.

HPD entered into the contract with The Bennet Group in March 2016 in the wake of news reports about a federal investigation into then-police Chief Louis Kealoha involving allegations of civil rights abuses and corruption. President and CEO Joan Bennet confirmed her company was paid about $106,000 for its work.

The group provided training classes to top HPD officials and created a communications plan, which suggested the department improve its reputation by educating the public about its efforts in the community and by addressing misperceptions relating to domestic violence policies, personnel matters and other issues.

The action plan also calls for more media-related professional development and training for HPD’s communications personnel and recommends developing an approach to issues management and crisis communications.

The contract with the PR firm ended March 20 without getting renewed.