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UPDATED 4/5/11 7:21 a.m.

City ethics complaints have nearly tripled in the past three years, and the city ethics chief said it’s not clear what caused the spike. In fiscal year 2008, the investigated 31 complaints. Last year, it investigated 91.

“We’re really not sure why it’s gone up,” said Honolulu Ethics Commission Executive Director¹ Chuck Totto. “A combination of things, probably.”

Of course, a spike in complaints doesn’t mean there have been more violations.

“I don’t think people at the city are more dishonest than they used to be,” Totto said. “I think 99 percent of the people at the city want to do their job the right way. They’re smart about saying, ‘Oh, I don’t think he’s supposed to do this.’”

Requests for ethics advice have dipped at the same time as complaints have increased. That could be because new employees had questions early on, and didn’t need to ask for advice as much in subsequent years.

Totto estimates requests for certain kinds of advice — like inquiries about dual employment and conflicts of interest — tripled, even quadrupled, in recent years.

The increase in complaints could also be as a result of the stricter ethics training requirements for the “top third” of city workers under the Mufi Hannemann administration.

That means thousands of staffers — including supervisors, managers, commissioners and elected officials — have gone through ethics training and re-training in the past five years.

“A few departments have everybody trained,” Totto said. “The mayor’s office, council members, departments like that.”

The commission is a city agency responsible for offering advice and making recommendation to city officials, training them about conflicts of interest and recommending disciplinary action or fining individuals when necessary. It:

• Advises and makes recommendations to city employees and officials as well as the public regarding conflicts of interest, acceptance of gifts, misuse of city resources, misuse of official position, representation of clients before city agencies, political activities, and post-employment restrictions.
• Educates city officers and employees to perform their duties in an ethical manner.
• Administers and enforces the financial disclosure requirements for city officials, employees, board and commission members, council members, and candidates for city elective office.
• Enforces the ethics laws by recommending discipline for violations.
• Administers the city’s lobbying laws

In recent years, Totto said city workers were encouraged to make complaints if they worried about coworkers’ conduct. He said that represented a departure from the culture at City Hall at the turn of the century.

“The (former Mayor Jeremy) Harris administration really clamped down on people,” Totto said. “The Hannemann administration was much more relaxed.”

While the uptick creates more work for the Ethics Commission — it’s in the process of hiring a new attorney to help handle the workload — the number of formal advisory opinions issued has remained about constant.

“Roughly, I’d say about 85 percent of the time we do not find a violation. But, you know, that other 15 percent can be pretty important.”

In 2010, the last fiscal year for which there’s data, there were five . The three 2010 opinions posted to the commission’s concern:

• The city’s gift prohibition laws with regard to the value of political fundraiser tickets
• Whether city attorneys can provide pro bono legal services (in some cases, they can)
• Reimbursements to a councilmember from the City Council’s Annual Contingency Allowance

The last is the best-known recent opinion. It emerged with allegations that City Councilmember Rod Tam misused city funds for personal use. The Ethics Commission issued Tam a $2,000 fine, and the Attorney General is now conducting a criminal investigation. Such cases are unusual, but even less egregious misconduct can be, in some ways, more important.

“For every Rod Tam, there are several littler cases,” Totto said. “A lot of the cases are not huge but they’re important in principle. It may be an emerging pattern of someone forgetting to file disclosures. Maybe just two times, but we look into it.”

Totto remembers another recent case that involved unethical use of funds, when workers in a city division — he won’t say which one — were self-authorizing overtime.

He said the division’s supervisors, whose salaries were $40,000 – $50,000 annually, were pulling in six figures because of all of the overtime they were logging. The Ethics Commission discovered the woman who kept records for the division was writing “spec,” — shorthand for “special” – in the logbook where overtime was tracked. Totto asked her why.

“She said, ‘I don’t know, I was just told to put that in for overtime,’” Totto said. “It was just a way of covering their okoles.”

It’s an example of how an investigation into one employee’s conduct can end up illuminating bigger problems, and how looking at the way the city conducts business can lead to a spate of ethics violations.

“We look at things case-by-case, as opposed to the system,” Totto said. “But it’s interesting for us to see where the system is breaking down because we’ll probably find someone who is taking advantage. It’s the rare employee, but it happens.”

With all the transition at Honolulu Hale this fall – a new mayor and five incoming City Councilmembers – Totto said he expects the increase in complaints to continue. He said it’s critical the commission has “enough muscle,” to keep tabs on the city, which is part of why they’re hiring another attorney.

“We need somebody who’s going to ride roughshod on these guys,” Totto said. “Sweep out the dark corners at the city.”