Kristin Izumi-Nitao

Kristin Izumi-Nitao is executive director of the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission, which especially during election season commands attention for its role in making sure the many political candidates — this year in Hawaii there are 298 of them in the primary — comply with laws intended to ensure the integrity and transparency of the campaign finance process.

Overseen by five commissioners, including the current chairman, attorney G. William Snipes of Maui, the commission pursues that mission by "enforcing the law, educating the public, administering public financing,and training campaign committees in order to encourage timely compliance," according to its website. In a sense, it’s somewhat of a policing body, and Izumi-Nitao’s background would seem to make her well suited for the job.

Prior to joining the commission in November 2010 — following the retirement of her predecessor, Barbara Wong — Izumi-Nitao was a deputy attorney general, responsible for overseeing the Hawaii Internet and Technology Crimes Unit in Hawaii and Guam. Before that, she was legal adviser to the board of trustees of the state Employees’ Retirement System, and before that, she was a Honolulu city prosecutor, handling felony, misdemeanor and juvenile crime cases.

A graduate of Punahou School, Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Santa Clara University School of Law in California, Izumi-Nitao started her legal career as a law clerk for Chief Justice Herman Lum of the Hawaii Supreme Court. She also clerked for a Circuit Court judge: James "Duke" Aiona," the former lieutenant governor now seeking the Republican Party nomination to run for governor.

Izumi-Nitao, 48, said she applied for the Campaign Spending Commission job because "it was a different direction, one that I hadn’t taken before, and I was open to some new challenges."

She is married to John Nitao, vice president and general counsel at Queen’s Medical Center, with whom she has 11-year-old twins (one boy and one girl) and lives in Kahala.

Question: Why does there even have to be such a thing as the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission?

Answer: It’s about transparency — following the money to make sure that anyone who’s running for office in our state or four counties is reporting who’s giving them money and how they’re spending it.

Our job is to make sure that this information is regularly produced and timely, and it’s our hope that the public, the community, the voters can look at it so they can have informed voting and know exactly who they’re putting into office. Who’s giving them the money and how they’re spending it is an indicator of the background of the candidate. This extends to, obviously, what we call non-candidate committees, which are PACs, political action committees.

Q: Are PACs a recent development?

A: No, they’ve been around for a long time. Typically, when people think of PACs, they think of employees from organizations giving some money, so that the organization can pull them together and give an amount. But now, given our laws, it has changed a bit into any organization or entity that’s going to give more than $1,000.

The law requires that we have to find out who is managing, financing or controlling the organization, and make an assessment as to whether there’s been a contribution, and whether an excess contribution has been made. If so, the excess gets forfeited to the state and the contributor gets fined. Sometimes this gets complicated, because you can imagine there are holding companies and companies get bought and sold. But we do our best here.

We have very limited resources. There’s only five staff, and there are 298 candidates running in this election, plus noncandidate committees. Overall there are almost 600 committees out there for the five of us to monitor, and also some corporations.

Q: What’s your annual budget?

A: Our budget comes from a trust fund.

Q: Really?

A: Yeah. Do you remember the $3 check-off on your income tax? If there’s anything I’m going to get from this interview, it’s to get people to check that box off. (Laughs) Essentially, if you check that off, that just says you want $3 redirected from the general fund … to the Hawaii Election Campaign Fund. That was established to publicly finance election campaigns, and later to cover of the operations of our office. Unfortunately that $3 tax check-off is dwindling.

Q: Why do you think that is?

A: I don’t know why that is.

Q: Maybe people don’t understand what that money is really being used for.

A: They don’t, I don’t think so. Public financing of elections simply means that if a candidate raises so much money, we will match that money. The idea behind it is that a candidate can have more grassroots support and not be privately funded by special interest groups.

Q: So are you getting whatever’s left that isn’t spent on matching funds?

A: Every year our operations cost about roughly $450,000, to cover salaries and, sometimes, since we don’t have an investigator on staff, we have to contract out for one.

Q: Maybe you ought to have two different accounts going.

A: (Laughs) Thank you. You can imagine it’s a challenging job to be the watchdog of legislators, right?

Q: And the theory behind the matching-funds program is that candidates being given money are more likely to cater to those who gave them money?

A: Well, that’s the thought. If you have a noncandidate committee, a PAC that’s supporting you, or you’re getting money from organizations, the idea is that these may be reflective of how you’re going to submit, draft, vote on legislation. And if you take the private interest out, that might equate to more of who you are as, you know, you’re not being bought, supposedly.

Q: There’s always been this thought that candidates who have the most money are going to win, and yet there are lots of examples where that’s been proven not true. And it might happen again here this weekend if (in the gubernatorial Democratic primary) Sen. David Ige beats Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who’s vastly outspent Ige.

A: Yes. Would you like the ratio of how much he’s outspent?

Q: Yeah, sure.

A: Nine to 1. How’s that? That’s pretty huge.

Q: Yeah, it seems Abercrombie has been forced to spend it all on this primary, and then he’ll have to raise a whole bunch more money if he wins. If Abercrombie were to lose the primary, what lesson would we learn from that?

A: I don’t know if we would have learned any lessons, but I guess the message would be that if he does not prevail, then money in this race didn’t play a significant role, or did not play the ultimate role.

Q: Has the rise of Super PACs become a concern for you?

A: Super PACs are a new creation and one that we have to be very cognizant of. I think we saw what it could do in the 2012 election with rail, and we’ll have to see what it does with this election. You can see how it can raise significant amounts of money, and spend it very quickly. …

The whole idea is that it cannot be coordinated with the candidate. But there are a lot more instances where you’re kind of wondering, is there coordination? I’m sure you’ve heard of AiKea UNITEHERE. AiKea has spent $159,000 for Joli Tokusato — only her — and of course we all know she has some roles with that union (UniteHere Local 5). That’s the highest number with respect to independent expenditures that I’m looking at right now, for her, for that one race.

Q: Do you think Super PACs generally are a positive or negative development?

A: It’s one that gives us concern, because they’re so new. I guess time will tell whether the laws and rules we have are strong enough to make sure that there’s no questionable activity going on.

Q: In that regard, your office last week that said you have a new app or something that speaks to this?

A: Yes, it is an application that will permit you to look at all noncandidate committees and see what kind of activities they are doing. We hope it will increase community engagement. It’s a visually more attractive way of looking at data that in the past has really existed more in a spreadsheet. And I think the color draws your eye to their activity. The same thing with candidates — that was launched in 2013, the candidates stuff. …

What’s very interesting is all the information — all the pie charts, graphs, bar charts, even geo maps you’re looking at — are a reflection of the data that committees are putting in. We are not doing this. It’s driven by the regular reports they’re doing.

Q: How does it come to your attention that mistakes are being made, or maybe even wrongdoing?

A: Oh, that still requires the human element. (Laughs) That’s what this five-person office is here for.

Q: In the case of Rep. Romy Cachola, for example, was the investigation of his spending generated by people inquiring?

A: Well, that came from our staff looking at some of the data coming in as well as reports. And I think what we’re hoping is with this application (at http://ags.hawaii.gov/campaign), that it will increase people looking at these reports, caring about these reports, to see what the data is, and we hope drive them to also call us. More eyes on the data is better than just the five of us, right?

Q: What has to happen for criminal charges to be filed against anybody?

A: The commissioners, whenever a matter is brought to their attention, have the decision-making authority to refer something to the Prosecutor’s Office, or the Attorney General’s Office.

Q: What would rise to that level?

A: There have been some where we’ve made that recommendation, but the last one they took and prosecuted was (former City Councilmember) Rod Tam. That predated me, so it was roughly in 2010.

Q: Do you think Hawaii’s campaign spending laws are too lax, too strict or just about right?

A: It’s hard to say. The law needs to be strict and it also needs to bend, too. I mean, things constantly change. So I’m always looking at it. And it’s not always simple to change the law, right? You do it through legislation, and I think we’re very aware we’re the watchdogs of the Legislature, who are the decision-makers of our recommendations. So the laws, I guess for now — I’m giving you a very watery answer — they are what they are. But I think as I get better, my office, my team gets more acquainted with the behavior, or at least the flow of the money, I think we’ve become better equipped to strengthen the laws where they’re needed.

Q: Are there any particular things you’re looking at to improve upon?

A: I think we’re cautious, because of Citizens United and the fact that we did get sued.

Q: You were sued?

A: Yeah, we were one of those states that — it’s Jim Bopp’s law firm that spearheaded Citizens United (the case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court that basically authorized Super PACs).

Our law basically says if you’re a noncandidate committee, you’re subject to a $1,000 contribution limit. But as a result of this lawsuit (Yamada v. Snipes), … we essentially ended up agreeing to be enjoined from enforcing the statute that had a contribution limit to noncandidate committees making solely independent expenditures. … So we just want to be cautious, because that lawsuit is in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and still has not been resolved.

Q: What is that lawsuit seeking?

A: The Attorney General’s Office argued on behalf of the Campaign Spending Commission defending Hawaii’s campaign finance law. A decision is still pending and includes the plaintiffs’ appeal concerning the reduction in their attorneys’ fees and costs. …

That being said, I think we’re comfortable dealing with areas that tighten up reporting and disclosure and ensuring that they are compliant.

In that regard, I should mention a significant piece of legislation that Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed into law last year, Act 112, which is not effective until the day after this year’s general election. It will substantially enhance disclosure requirements pertaining to noncandidate committees and thus further promote transparency.

Q: Do you think such rules discourage some people from running for office?

A: Well, we would hope not. … I’ll be honest, it is a steep learning curve, filing campaign finance reports. We do provide training; we do have guidebooks, manuals and e-learning videos on our website. We have regular e-blasts, we tweet, we have our website that has everything that you need up there. But I think what new candidates have to understand is that this is sort of the cost of running for office, and the people, the public, are entitled to know who’s giving you money, including whether you’re self-funded.

We do, unfortunately, have difficult conversations with candidates who feel like this is not fair to them or they don’t want to do this and they’re very upset. But I think if you’re going to run for office, you have an obligation to show your voters who you are as a person, which includes who is giving you money and how you’re spending it. Even if you have no activity, you still have a duty to show that.