Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi’s seemingly cavalier attitude about using a taxpayer-funded credit card for personal expenses signals a potential pattern of misuse that demands the immediate release of relevant financial records.

As the ranking elected official on the island of Hawaii, Kenoi sets the tone for government employees’ use of purchasing cards known as pCards, and the standard he has set is alarmingly low. By using his Hawaii County-issued credit card to pay a $892 tab at a Honolulu hostess bar, the mayor violated rules prohibiting use of the cards for personal expenses and specifically for alcohol, according to West Hawaii Today, the newspaper that first reported the story.

Moreover, the mayor acknowledged that he has used the pCard for personal expenses on other occasions as well. He insists that he always reimburses the county later, as he did in this case — about three months after the fact. He charged the hostess bar bill in December 2013, and reimbursed the taxpayers in March 2014.

"I’ve used my pCard when I shouldn’t have," West Hawaii Today quoted Kenoi as saying. "But I always try and make sure the taxpayers only pay for official business."

Kenoi’s financial practices will bring necessary scrutiny to his own office, and to the pCard program overall, a procurement system used by the state and county governments throughout Hawaii.

The pCards, which are similar to credit cards, are issued to select government employees and authorized only for purchases necessary for official government business.

They are not intended to replace personal credit cards, but as a substitute for purchase orders — streamlining the billing process by allowing employees to charge small purchases on the pCard without having to first prepare a purchase order. The pCard system is supposed to have strict oversight, starting at the top of each department or agency, to prevent theft, fraud and abuse.

These controls seem to be lacking in the highest echelons of Hawaii County.

The fact that the mayor eventually settled up does not excuse that he misused the pCard in the first place, essentially tapping taxpayer funds as a personal cash flow. The mayor was in Honolulu on official government business, and charged a flight and a rental car on his pCard for the same trip that brought him to the Club Evergreen; that last expense should have been excluded from the legitimate travel costs.

Many questions remain: How often does the popular Hawaii island Democrat use the pCard for personal purchases? Where does he use it? (Charges at a hostess bar raise their own separate questions). How timely are his repayments? Who pays the interest on unauthorized pCard charges, if any? 

Answering those questions accurately requires a review of Kenoi’s pCard credit-card statements, an important public disclosure that has been resisted. West Hawaii Today’s repeated attempts since 2010 to obtain copies of the actual credit-card statements were rebuffed; rather, the County Finance Department compiled and released a summary of charges. The newspaper reported obtaining the December 2013 credit-card statement from an alternate source. The newspaper has renewed its request under the Hawaii Open Records Law, a pursuit since joined by numerous other media outlets in Hawaii, including the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, which is seeking the credit-card statements, records of Kenoi’s reimbursements and other related documentation.

Kenoi must comply immediately with these requests, which obviously serve the public interest in helping to determine the scope and duration of potential misuse of taxpayer funds.