Website and hotline offer confidentiality for UH whistleblowers

Allegations of wrongdoing by University of Hawaii employees and officials can now be confidentially reported by students, faculty, staff and the public through a whistleblower website and hotline the university has launched.

The online portal and hotline are intended to be one-stop reporting tools for suspected legal and policy violations, such as fraud, waste or abuse, according to the website. Complaints will be forwarded to the proper campus or office for investigation.

The university contracted with EthicsPoint, an outside reporting service used by more than 800 institutions of higher education. Any information provided through the website and hotline is hosted on secure servers controlled by the contractor. The services will cost UH $25,000 annually, according to a university spokesman.

The reporting tool was seen as one approach to implementing newly drafted board of regents and executive policies on whistleblowing and retaliation.

Under the proposed regents policy, UH would be required to “encourage and enable” faculty, staff, students, administrators and the public to report known or suspected violations of law, regulation or policy. It would prohibit retaliation against anyone reporting violations.

The policy authorizes the university’s president to implement it, but carves out an exception for the board’s Independent Audit Committee to “review and monitor good faith reports of financial fraud.”

The exception was made to align with state law, which charges the audit committee with reviewing UH’s antifraud programs and controls, and aiding in discovering and remedying incidences of fraud. The law also gives the committee oversight of internal and external complaints regarding accounting, auditing matters or suspected fraud.

But some regents want the board to have oversight of the entire whistleblower program, not just financial complaints.

“My concerns over the last many months were far broader than that,” regent Jeffrey Portnoy said at a recent Independent Audit Committee meeting, where the proposed policy was discussed. “When we’re talking about a whistleblower program, we never limited it to allegations of financial mismanagement. And if the statute for some reason limits what this committee can do … I ask that another committee, whether it’s Personnel or something else, be given overview of all nonfinancial whistleblower conduct.”

He cited as an example the sex assault scandal that has rocked Baylor University, saying that the school’s governing board needed to step in and take action after concerns were raised about the university’s handling of sexual abuse complaints.

“Because all the way up to the position of president, what went on at Baylor was kept secret until the regents took over,” Portnoy said. “So all I’m saying is, I don’t see where we’d want to limit our oversight of the whistleblower program to simply financial.”

Regent Michael McEnerney questioned how complaints against the president would be handled if the administration — instead of the regents — has oversight of the whistleblower program.

“I don’t see the supervision that the board has, or our committee has, other than for financial fraud relations. And I think that’s a mistake,” McEnerney said. “We need to take responsibility for monitoring the whistleblower program, whether that should be this committee or another committee or the board as a whole. It’s an important missing link, because we are the final arbitrators for what goes on in the university.”

Jan Gouveia, UH’s vice president for administration, said the president would ultimately be responsible for complying with the whistleblower policy.

“That is a separate issue from who within the board of regents’ governance structure would be responsible for overseeing the president’s compliance with this general policy,” Gouveia said. “I don’t think that this policy is in any way restricting authority of the board as a governing body from being able to have oversight over any complaints.”

The five-member audit committee unanimously voted to recommend the policy to the full board. The board, however, deferred action at its June 2 meeting. UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl said the policy is being revised and is expected to be taken up at a future regents meeting.

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ON THE NET:

>> The UH whistleblower website is at 808ne.ws/1sH7SJj and the 24-hour hotline is 855-874-2849.