UH-Senate hearings like washing laundry in public

Exacerbate: "To make a bad or problematic situation worse."

Use in a sentence: "I am being exacerbated here, I really am," Sen. Donna Mercado Kim said Monday.

The University of Hawaii’s problems are much larger than just exacerbating Kim, chairwoman of the Senate Special Committee on Accountability, although the deftness of the UH leaders in making a bad situation worse is breathtaking.

What started as a fumbled $200,000 down payment for an amateurishly planned Stevie Wonder concert cascaded into M.R.C. Greenwood, UH president, testifying before Kim’s committee. And, not for her accomplishments.

When asked about allegations of implied political pressure from Gov. Neil Abercrombie and legislative leaders, Greenwood sounded like a Mafia don appearing before a congressional committee.

"I’ve said enough. If you want more, senator, you’re going to have to put me under oath," Greenwood said.

This was right after she acknowledged, "My job is on the line," as the public furor over the mishandled concert and the bumbling attempts to remove Jim Donovan, former UH athletic director, who was involved with the concert, increased.

Kim’s committee accomplished a rarity in Hawaii politics; it forced out in public the real question of the competency of state administrators.

Eric Martinson, chairman of the Board of Regents, particularly irked Kim, who remarked that to her it appeared that Martinson and a few other regents were running the state’s only major university without involving the entire board in making the decisions public.

Asked if the actions by the regents and Greenwood have put the UH in a bad light, Martinson said execution and public relations were done poorly.

"So are you saying if you had used more smoke and mirrors, things would have been better? You can only do so much with PR," Kim responded.

To quiet threats of a slander lawsuit from Donovan, the regents said he would start work at more than $200,000 a year, for three years in some unspecified job doing "community relations."

Kim said the UH has policies in place for creating executive positions and they were not followed, and she questioned why UH never asked for the money for this new position.

"You shouldn’t have created a position with no name and stuck someone in it without knowing what you were doing," Kim said.

"You should not be hiring firms without knowing what is the cost and scope. Perhaps the process is backwards.

"And that is why it is coming out badly, not getting better PR," Kim said.

Kim is particularly concerned that part of the UH reaction to the legislative hearing was to hire the public relations team of Jim McCoy and Barbara Tanabe.

Kim said one of their jobs was to urge community members to pressure lawmakers not to hold the hearing.

A decade from now, the entire affair is likely to be mostly forgotten, but the "teaching moment" in the current crisis belongs to Gov. Neil Abercrombie.

The majority of UH regents have been appointed by the current governor, so it is up to Abercrombie or his representatives to "show leadership," as Kim is requesting, and reshape the Board of Regents and UH administration.

The Senate hearings will continue next week and are likely to go on for several sessions.

Now that UH has been forced to show its dirty laundry in public, it would be a good time to do the wash in public.

My UH journalism professors Bob Scott and Bonnie Wiley liked to quote Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: "Sunshine is the best disinfectant."

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.