Commission should vet all grants

The leadership of the City Council seems unwilling to support the newly created system for evaluating grant requests, judging by the rhetoric coming out of Honolulu Hale.

Grants in aid have provided the conduit Council members have used to pipe appropriations to nonprofit organizations in their districts. The money available for such grants fell short in the wake of the economic recession, but voters enabled a minimum amount to be set aside for the grants, even during hard times.

That mechanism, enabled by a City Charter amendment voters approved in 2012, established a guarantee for nonprofits: half of 1 percent of annual city revenues. A process for vetting requests also was authorized.

The Council should allow this system to work, rather than pursuing ways to get around it.

The administration of Mayor Kirk Caldwell has clashed with Council leadership over the initial allotments that have been made. Under the Charter provision, $5.1 million in grants were to be distributed, after the Grants in Aid Advisory Commission was formed to review the first round of requests.

In the meantime, however, the Council sought to provide more aid on its own and, because the commission had not been constituted yet, allotted $8 million. To some extent, the additional outlay could be justified because many of the nonprofits experienced deep cuts from state and federal sources and needed to meet the demand for services that backed up since the recession.

However, there was no reason to push it through without going through the review process, abandoning the protocol that voters had approved only months earlier. Here’s why: The process raises the bar for applicants, improving the chances that taxpayer funds will be placed in practiced hands and spent in the most effective way.

The mayor rightly has resisted releasing the $8 million batch of grants until they are reviewed. Meanwhile, the commission has sent its list of recommendations on the $5.1 million allotment to the Council for final approval. And now Council Chairman Ernie Martin has said that next week he will exercise the Council’s prerogative to amend that list.

He has that right, under the enabling legislation, but it makes no sense to short-circuit the review process for anything but a compelling reason.

The commission now has a routine for performing its review function, said Pamela Witty-Oakland, director of the city Department of Community Services, the agency overseeing the grants program. The schedule was compressed in this inaugural year, but more typically requests for proposals go out in the fall. The commission reviews them and gives its recommendations to the Council each March, so the awards can coincide with the regular city budget cycle, she said.

During the review, Witty-Oakland added, the commission will weigh the proposals on how well they fit in established priority categories based on community needs. These include services for underserved populations — such as domestic violence projects, services to the elderly and low-income families — as well as programs in the arts.

They are graded on a 100-point scale, with 40 points for the quality of the proposal itself. The remaining 60 points reflect the capacity of the organization, including its demonstrated ability to budget and execute projects, as well as garner other funding sources.

That sounds like a reasonable basis for decisions. Nonprofits are not all created equal, and having this review process in place will help to ensure that grant requests are handled fairly and efficiently.

It also insulates the process from accusations of corruption, and that is something that must not be dispensed with lightly. Doing so would undermine the whole purpose of a review that the voters clearly endorsed.