Kealohas rack up legal bills, without a way to pay them

Innocent until proven guilty. That’s what taxpayers must keep in mind as the trial of disgraced former Police Chief Louis Kealoha and his deputy city prosecutor wife, Katherine, unfolds — with the public now forced to foot their legal bills.

Hawaii Federal Judge J. Michael Seabright on Thursday granted a motion from the Kealohas’ three then-lawyers to assign court-appointed attorneys for the couple’s defense against public corruption charges. After examining the Kealohas’ financial affidavits, Seabright said the money for attorneys’ fees “just isn’t there.”

The court-appointed attorneys, expected to be named Monday or Tuesday, will come from a list of pre-approved Hawaii attorneys to be paid at court rates. That is reportedly $127 per hour — for a federal criminal trial expected to involve a quarter-million pages of evidence, about 500 witnesses and last four months. Gulp.

“It’s clear their debt exceeds their assets,” Seabright said Thursday.

Those debts include mortgage payments on their home, a home equity loan and another mortgage — a lien — to one of their early attorneys for up to $700,000 worth of fees.

Their assets? These include their $1.24 million Hawaii Kai home and his pension for 33 years on the police force, where he earned $182,088 yearly as chief. And don’t forget that the Police Commission gave him $250,000 to retire this March — which Kealoha must return if he is convicted of a felony within the next six years.

Along those lines: If conviction does occur, the financial burden should be shared by the convicts. That would be justice.

A tool for measuring schools

The state Department of Education unveiled a new online tool, called the Strategic Plan Dynamic Report, to help you find out how Hawaii’s public school students are performing.

It’s easy to use and covers 10 indicators of student success, such as absenteeism, graduation rates and academic achievement. You can see how the school system as a whole is performing, compare individual geographical complex areas, or specific categories of students, such as students with disabilities. It offers a pretty good macro view of student performance, with the added bonus that it was built in-house, rather than by the usual overpriced, unreliable outside consultants.

Of course, if you have a child in a public school, chances are you’re more interested in the micro view: how your school performs, and how it compares to other schools. The tool doesn’t do that. But you can find statistics for individual schools: Click the small button called “Find Schools” at the top of the hawaiipublicschools.org website, and follow the prompts.

The DOE discontinued its school-by-school performance ranking, in part out of concern for the possible demoralizing and punitive effects on low-ranking schools. It’s unfortunate that we’ve lost this useful information. But when it comes to the DOE making its public data more user-friendly, we hope the effort continues, and expands.

Past time to get vessel off reef

It’s downright disturbing that the wreckage of a fishing vessel that ran aground more than a month ago about 400 yards off Waikiki’s Kaimana Beach is still there.

The “Pacific Paradise” continues to be a source of “petroleum-based products” leaching into the ocean and a dangerous magnet for the curious since it snagged on rocks just before midnight Oct. 10. The longer it’s allowed to sit out there, the greater the risks to Hawaii’s offshore environment, as well as to beachgoers at the state’s premier tourism district.

A 500-yard safety perimeter has been designated around the wreckage — but inexplicably, no signage is on the beach to notify locals or tourists about what’s going on.

The boat had 19 foreign men on board, with an American captain. An ill-fated attempt on Oct. 14 to salvage the vessel ended dramatically, when the boat caught fire, causing salvage crew members to jump overboard; seven had to be rescued.

The Coast Guard just hired a new contractor team to salvage and mitigate pollution from the 79-foot vessel, so hopefully, things will finally get moving. This ship carcass and its potential hazards must be taken out of Waikiki waters before more serious damage occurs.