������Ƶ

Honolulu’s ethics watchdog says it can’t explain a dramatic fall in the number of complaints it received last year, but it’s hopeful that the decrease might be the result of more specialized training and expanded outreach.

The Honolulu Ethics Commission reviewed 81 enforcement filings or ethics complaints in the 2023 fiscal year – half the number it received the previous year.

“It did kind of drop off a cliff,” said Jan Yamane, the commission’s executive director and lead counsel. 

The number of ethics complaints the commission received in 2023 was the lowest since 2018, but the 160 it received in 2022 was a record. 

That spike could be attributed to the increased scrutiny of ethics rules following the guilty pleas of former state legislators Ty Cullen and Kalani English for taking part in a bribery scheme. That atmosphere also led to additional full-time hires at the commission that year.

However, the 81 complaints last year is still lower than the average of 100 for the past nine years. 

Those complaints are the main trigger for the commission’s investigations. As a result, incidents of enforcement in the over the same period.

Over the last several years, the top areas requiring enforcement have been the failure to file financial disclosures, conflicts of interest, misuse of city resources for personal or family benefit and complaints about lobbying or political activity, reports show.

Only a handful of those cases in the past five years have gotten as far as the formal administrative process, said Laurie Wong-Nowinski, the commission’s deputy executive director. Most involve making recommendations to department administration or the issuing of a corrective action letter. Or staff may personally reach out to the subject of a complaint and counsel them over minor matters, she said.

Yamane said the commission was more focused on getting information out to staff preemptively.

The numbers for the 2024 fiscal year won’t be available until the fall, so it is too early to say if that downward trend continued, she said. But if the numbers are similar, the commission would be looking at whether it was connected to its expanded ethics training program and outreach by staff attorneys, or some other factor.

One factor supporting the training theory is a milestone the commission reached this year. It achieved 100% voluntary compliance in the filing of personal financial disclosures. 

“It was a first for us,” Yamane said. Usually the commission had to chase down people after reviewing the filings.

The information is required from candidates for elective office, elected officers and agency directors and deputies. The reports itemize business interests, creditors, fiduciary positions and property and are filed with the city clerk and become public record.

Members of boards and commissions — who are not Honolulu employees but officers of the city — are required to file confidential disclosures with the commission. 

The compliance was boosted by staff attorney attendance at nearly all of the city’s board and commission meetings last fall, Yamane said. Staff were also available to help people transition to a new online system that supersedes a paper-based one. 

Homemade Banana Bread Allowed

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi signed new rules last week tightening limits on gifts to employees from anyone with financial connections to the city, including vendors and lobbyists. It also lowers the annual cap on gifts from $200 to $50.

The legislation updated Honolulu’s expiring gift law from 2022 and was drafted by commission staff after they researched best practices in other jurisdictions.

The earlier legislation was overly complicated and required employees to consider a range of factors when assessing if they could accept gifts, Wong-Nowinski said.

“We wanted to make it so that your everyday employee wouldn’t have to call us up every time there was a gift question,” she said.

The law prohibits gifts to city officers and employees from “prohibited sources.” That is now defined as anyone who does procurement for the city, including contractors, consultants, concessionaires, vendors and lobbyists.

The full ethics commission had advocated for a zero-tolerance policy, Yamane said, but based on the research conducted, it stopped short of recommending that. Every knick-knack or cookie would become an enforcement nightmare, she said. The $50 annual threshold for gifts was a commonsense concession to cover gifts like home-baked goods.

Departments can set a stricter standard and the commission supports that, Tamane said.

The commission has also been sending letters to vendors to try to curtail the giving of gifts.

The rules prohibit the solicitation of gifts, but still don’t require disclosure. “Everybody always likes ‘gifts of aloha’ but we’re trying to tamp that down — that shouldn’t be an expectation of city employees,” Wong-Nowinski said.

The on ethical issues the commission has published has also been tapering off, while requests for informal advice from staff attorneys via email and phone have steadily risen. 

The demand for informal opinions peaked in the 2021 fiscal year, which the commission attributes to requests from the incoming Blangiardi administration and new City Council members. 

New administrations bring in staff from the private sector and that can also give rise to potential conflicts of interest. Most of them have never before filed a financial disclosure form of the type required by government, Yamane said.

Conflicts of interest questions can also arise at the end of an employment cycle. 

The commission is anticipating a similar spike in demand for informal guidance after this year’s election, as departing council members or staff navigate the one-year cooling-off period on outside employment that might conflict with their city jobs.