Time to accelerate audit on Tourism Authority

Wisps of the fog enveloping Hawaii Tourism Authority spending are lifting. For example, the agency is adopting a new policy requiring its board to approve expenditures of more than $250,000. But a transparency-focused bill calling for more unredacted budget information and fewer closed-door meeting secrets is dead at the state Capitol, as is a resolution calling for an HTA audit this year.

However, there’s now a push for early delivery of an already scheduled HTA management and financial audit. Conducted every five years, it’s due in December 2018. But legislators want to see the results in January — to help guide the drafting of another round of legislation aimed at balancing “proprietary information” and “competitive advantage” with the public’s right to know how taxpayer dollars are being spent.

$3M grant good news for cancer fight, and UH center

Good news always streams in warmly, like a ray of sunshine, but especially when it illuminates a subject that has been a zone of dark clouds.

The University of Hawaii Cancer Center, on which headlines about financial problems have dominated, now can take some encouragement from a $3 million federal grant to underwrite some promising research.

Vernonia cinerea, or ironweed, is a species here that biologist James Turkson is studying for cancer-fighting effects. Kudos — money doesn’t grow on trees, but something truly valuable may be growing underfoot.