ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ

Republican Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona has portrayed himself in the governor’s race as the fiscal conservative.

Because Aiona has virtually no legislative record to examine, Civil Beat decided to look at one aspect of his tenure as lieutenant governor that would indicate whether he abides by his own prescriptions.

After the primary election, we decided to examine expenses in his office. We ran into problems from the start, despite what Aiona has told us about his belief in government transparency.

“There should be no secrets in our spending, in any department really, there should be no secrets, right? It’s your money,” he told us recently. “So, in the spending and the revenues that come in, why should there be any secrets?”

But when we sought information about expenses from his office, Aiona’s deputy chief of staff, Harold Nedd, got involved, saying the matter was “delicate.” We’ve also been told that expenses aren’t “readily retrievable” and that the office isn’t required to tell the public who it does business with.

The law, actually, says otherwise.

The state says disclosure of “government purchasing information” is required “and that agencies must make it “available for public inspection and duplication during regular business hours.”

Here’s an account of our interaction with the lieutenant governor’s office.

Our first request to Aiona’s office was an e-mail on Sept. 22, 2010. It included six questions, one asking if we could examine the LG’s office expenses for the past year.

A staff member answered most of our questions, responding to the one about expenses saying, “Due to low office staffing, it would entail a great deal of time and expense to gather information on all office expenditures over the past year. However, if you wish to limit your request to a particular type of office expenditure, we will attempt to address it.”

When it came to money, Nedd got involved. We narrowed the scope of our query to January and June 2010 and, at his request, filed a formal records request on Oct. 1 for “a record of all expenditures made by the Hawaii Lt. Governor’s office for the months of January 2010 and June 2010.”

Nedd responded six days later saying “the request is very broad, and the information sought is not readily retrievable.”

“We estimate it will take about 20 hours or more to locate, redact, and copy the information for each expense.”

We followed up by phone. Nedd asked if we would again consider narrowing our search to a particular expense.

However, because we’re seeking a total picture of the management and spending habits of Aiona’s office, we told him it wouldn’t be useful for us to examine expenses by category, say for lei.

But on Oct. 7 we did narrow our request, to staff expense reports for January and June.

Ten business days later, the maximum number of days an agency has to respond to formal requests, Nedd sent a letter saying he could not fulfill our request because “the personnel within the Office of the Lieutenant Governor does not have expense accounts, and does not file expense reports with our office or any other agency.”

He reiterated that funds in their office are “used strictly for salaries, office supplies as well as equipment, postage, software and transportation.”

On Oct. 21, we had another conversation with Nedd, who tried to be helpful. We learned that it would be better to seek invoices vendors file with the office.

Rather than file another official information request, we put our request into an e-mail, an approach Nedd had indicated he preferred, because a formal request has legal deadlines attached to it.

On Oct. 22, we asked to view invoices approved for payment by the LG’s office for the months of January and June 2010.

On Tuesday, Nedd called and said he needed to see the request in writing as a formal open records request.

He described our request to see office expenses as “delicate.”

He said that it would not be very easy to fulfill our request to see invoices because information on them might have to be redacted.

“We’re not required to tell you who the vendors are,” Nedd said.

As we discussed the problems we’d been having getting information from the office, he said: “If you guys don’t ask the right questions, then it’s not our fault.”