The state Ethics Commission’s contested-case hearing against Rowena Akana wrapped up Friday with both sides painting a different picture of the veteran Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee.
While commission Executive Director Daniel Gluck said Akana violated the public’s trust and fell short of the standard of integrity demanded by the state Ethics Code, Akana’s attorney said her actions were guided by the best interests of Native Hawaiians and that she never failed to pay back any disallowed expenditure.
“There was no testimony given by anybody in this entire weeklong proceeding of an item that was not allowed by OHA that she failed to somehow, one way or another, pay back,” attorney Stephen Tannenbaum said.
The 28-year OHA trustee faces a potential $50,000 fine for nearly 50 infractions of the state’s Gifts Law, Gifts Reporting Law and Fair Treatment Law.
The charges accuse Akana of accepting a $72,000 cash gift to help pay for legal fees and for using her trustee allowance to buy home cable television services, an Apple iTunes gift card, a Hawaiian Airlines Premier Club membership and restaurant food, among other things.
The five-member Ethics Commission must now make a decision on Akana’s culpability. Chairman Rey Graulty said scheduling issues could delay a ruling until after the new year.
A motion to dismiss the charges was rejected by the commission earlier in the day, with Graulty saying there wasn’t enough evidence presented over the weeklong hearing to make such a determination.
In his closing argument, Gluck said Akana violated the law when she accepted thousands of dollars to underwrite her lawsuit against OHA at a time when the funder, Campbell Estate heiress Abigail Kawananakoa, was also suing the agency.
The law does not require proof of quid pro quo, only “a reasonable inference” of a gift intended to influence or reward the recipient.
Gluck said Akana also used her official position to spend more public funds than allowed and then intimidated, harassed and abused the OHA staff when she was confronted with the expense discrepancies.
“There were birthday parties. There were going-away parties, Coco Puffs, manapua. These things are nice. They’re especially nice when you are using someone else’s money to pay for them,” he said.
But Tannenbaum said many, if not most, of those expenses were permitted under OHA’s food policies.
As for the Kawananakoa charges, he pointed out that testimony by Kawananakoa trustee James Wright indicated the heiress was interested only in fairness and was not seeking any personal benefit. In her suit, he said, Akana was merely trying to expose the closed-door dealings that led to the purchase of OHA’s current headquarters.
Tannenbaum criticized Gluck for trying to make the case all about Akana’s demeanor, that she tried to intimidate OHA staff and was hard to work with.
“Everybody has different ideas about what they want in their candidates,” he said. “I want my candidates to be tenacious, to stand up for themselves, to have a strong moral compass, not to be walked all over, not to take BS and to call it as it is. And that’s kind of who trustee Akana is. And unfortunately, that ruffles a lot of people’s feathers.”
When it’s a political organization in which you’re in a dissonant group and in the minority, you irritate some people, he said. “There’s gonna be blowback.”
Outside the hearing, Akana attorney Jim Bickerton said he believes his client is the target of powerful forces who want her removed from the board so they can more easily develop OHA’s extensive Kakaako Makai property.
“There are a lot of public-private partnerships people want to get going and private developers who want a piece of that action, and a certain number of trustees who are all too ready to wheel and deal behind closed doors. They need to get rid of the few trustees who still fight for sunshine and transparency. Rowena Akana is one of them,” he said.
Akana has also filed suit in Oahu’s Circuit Court, accusing the Ethics Commission of exceeding its authority in dictating how OHA trust funds can be spent.
In addition, Akana has said the timing of the contested-case hearing — only the third such proceeding in more than 30 years — was designed to keep her from campaigning for office and to soil her reputation right before the election.
