With a mixture of dismay and outrage, taxpayers have watched as the debacle of the bogus Stevie Wonder concert, ostensibly to raise money for the University of Hawaii Athletics Department, began to unfold. Instead of generating funds for the department, UH was fleeced by an unauthorized agent to the tune of $200,000. Further, department officials, including Athletic Director Jim Donovan, were put on paid leave; ultimately Donovan is exonerated of blame but transferred to an undefined job, paying more than $211,000, within the chancellor’s office.
According to an agreement document the Star-Advertiser obtained, the job offer was made in exchange for Donovan’s promise he wouldn’t sue.
Well, people hoped as the cash register rang up the mounting total, that perhaps the UH Board of Regents, overseers on behalf of the state, will provide a proper accounting of the situation. They would be armed, after all, with a fact-finding report from attorneys Dennis Chong Kee and Calvert Chipchase.
No such luck. After 7 1⁄2 hours in a closed-door session, the top brass and the regents emerged with an official endorsement of how UH President M.R.C. Greenwood handled the situation, and little else by way of justification, clarity or consequence. How shameful.
The report they released was a thorough but heavily redacted document. Even the names Stevie Wonder and Virginia Hinshaw, the former UH-Manoa chancellor in the weeks leading up to the discovery of the swindle, have been erased, though their identity is obvious.
It would be laughable if it were not so painful. In any case, it’s not evidence of the transparency Greenwood has promised here.
This was the proverbial "mistakes were made" kind of admission so common in government. Several people had a hand in the screw-up, but nobody’s being held accountable.
Except the taxpayers, of course.
According to the report, Rich Sheriff, manager of the department’s Stan Sheriff Center where the concert would be held, was found to be the "point person for UH with respect to the planned concert." Donovan approved of the concert and assisted with some of the agreement terms but was traveling and was not in the loop for the transfer of the cash.
"It will be a miracle if Jim and I still have a job by Friday," Sheriff wrote on July 9, the day before the concert cancellation was announced. Well, in the kind of miracle that happens only in political cronyism, Sheriff still has his job, and Donovan remains employed, too — doing what, nobody is saying. But rest assured, taxpayers, we are paying him richly for doing it.
Tom Apple, the current Manoa chancellor, has expressed confidence that Donovan’s skills will be useful in that mystery job. He’s also said UH will begin searching for Donovan’s successor at the helm of the athletics department, someone able to take UH "to the next level." Nobody’s ever defined what that level is, or determined whether the public will even support going there.
If UH leaders were dissatisfied with Donovan as AD — because of how the UH football transition to the Mountain West Conference played out, or whatever reason a sports fan might conjure — his contract’s expiration next March surely would have provided an out that would have been less costly.
Perhaps it’s a compliment to Donovan that he has friends in high places, some of them lawmakers signing a letter urging his retention. Must be niceto have friends who have your back.
The taxpayers, alas, could use a few friends like that. If any of them sit on the UH Board of Regents, one wouldn’t know it. No one’s stepping up to the plate to make it right.
