Embattled city ethics chief steps down

Chuck Totto’s decision Wednesday to step down under duress as the city’s longtime ethics director ends a yearslong saga of his butting heads with Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration, Caldwell’s recently appointed city Ethics Commission members, and even members of Totto’s own staff.

It also leaves an already understaffed Honolulu Ethics Commission office completely void of the key personnel needed to investigate complaints brought against city officials, or to give officials advice and routine training on ethics matters, its former employees say.

“There’s no one to conduct investigations or to give legal advice and so on at this point,” Totto said Wednesday, minutes after the Ethics Commission emerged from executive session to announce it had unanimously approved a “separation from employment” agreement with him. The commissioners had met for more than an hour in closed session discussing a “possible civil claim” by Totto against them.

Totto, who has written advisory opinions against mayors, Council members and other powerful people over a span of more than a decade, listened to the announcement in person. He was flanked by his lawyer, Peter Carlisle — the city’s former mayor, whom Totto had often challenged in his role as Ethics Commission Executive Director prior to Caldwell. Carlisle announced last month that he would run to reclaim that seat.

“This is an unfortunate end to a career devoted to demanding ethics in city government,” Carlisle told the commission. “As a friend, my opinion is this was undeserved and shabby treatment for a devoted employee of the city.”

Totto, who became the ethics director in 2000, clashed over the commission’s independence — and specifically its budget — with Caldwell’s administration since Caldwell took office in 2013. Many of those disagreements have centered around Corporation Counsel Donna Leong, with Totto questioning her authority to assert control over his budget and personnel actions.

By several accounts the now former ethics director also had a tumultuous relationship with Caldwell’s three appointees to the commission: Chairwoman Victoria Marks, Riki May Amano and Allene Suemori. All three attended Wednesday’s meeting.

“We thank Chuck for all his years of dedicated public service and his stalwart efforts to educate the employees of the City and County of Honolulu about ethics,” Marks said in a statement released before Wednesday’s meeting had finished. “His contributions will reverberate for years to come.”

Critics of Totto say he has long gone unchecked while conducting investigations subjectively. Supporters, however, contend the director should have the authority to conduct investigations without fear of political influence.

“There have been many many problems dealing with the Caldwell administration,” Totto said Wednesday. When Caldwell took office, it marked the first time that the managing director and corporation counsel started to “really focus in on what we were doing, all the way down to whether we could buy a GPS tracking device,” or “unilaterally changing our budget,” he explained.

Totto also said the administration eliminated some $6,000 in ethics training for city employees from the commission’s budget, and that that reflected “how low of a priority they consider ethics.”

In a statement, Leong said that annual budget discussions between the administration and the Ethics Commission “reflect responsible and prudent fiscal oversight of the limited fiscal resources of the city.”

“Many agencies are experiencing heavy workloads with new added responsibilities and reduced personnel; these fiscal realities are not unique to the Ethics Commission,” Leong’s statement said.

The city Ethics Commission office in fiscal year 2016 had a budget of $427,527, and it requires at least an executive director, an associate legal counsel and an investigator in order to be effective, Totto said.

Now, it has none of those positions filled. The office opened cases for 43 of the complaints brought to it in fiscal year 2016, Totto said. Most of those are still open, and currently no one is pursuing them, he added.

Its last investigator, Bill Shanafelt, left in May after about nine months on the job. He said Wednesday after the meeting that “micromanaging” by the commission against Totto and the office staff became counterproductive and intolerable.

In March, Totto served a 30-day unpaid suspension for, among other things, allegedly fostering a stressful work environment. Upon his return, the commission informed him that it wanted its attorneys and investigators to complete daily work time sheets detailing their tasks in six-minute increments.

“You think anybody else has to write a six-minute log of what you do every day? It was crazy,” Shanafelt said Wednesday. “There are numerous cases that should have been worked and haven’t been worked in months because of this drama,” he added.

Laurie Wong-Nowinski, the commission’s associate legal counsel and Totto’s second-in-command through 2015, resigned voluntarily effectively April 1 — the last working day before Totto’s return from suspension.

About a year ago, the commission voted 5-3 to implement a strict media policy that severely curtailed what Totto, other commission staff and even commissioners themselves could say to reporters. Totto was required to consult with at least the chairman of the commission before speaking to media.

Following an outcry by media, good-government advocates and the public, who described the policy as a muzzle on Totto, the commission voted 4-3 to rescind it and then voted 7-0 to approve a less stringent set of procedures.

The stricter policy was adopted a month after Totto was chastised by Leong for comments he made on cases involving former Councilmen Romy Cachola and Nestor Garcia, and the validity of Council votes cast on the island’s now $8 billion rail project

Wednesday’s separation agreement included a financial package for Totto but “nothing particularly impressive,” Carlisle said.

The commission will meet June 23 in closed session to discuss filling the commission’s vacant positions, Marks said.

The group “is going to have a real task ahead of it to put together a staff that can handle all the issues that we have to do,” Totto said Wednesday. “I really wish them luck because this is a very, very important agency for city government.”

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Star-Advertiser reporter Gordon Y.K. Pang contributed to this report.