DOE lied about school repair backlog, Luke says

A key lawmaker Thursday accused the state Department of Education of lying about the size of the statewide backlog of repair and maintenance projects at Hawaii public schools.

House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke also told officials with Gov. David Ige’s administration that they “need to think about what you’re doing to future generations” when the administration proposes to borrow and spend money on construction such as the Ala Wai flood control project.

The DOE told lawmakers in January 2018 that the school repair and maintenance backlog was $293 million as of 2017, which was a significant drop from $392 million in 2010.

However, later in the year DOE notified some lawmakers that the true backlog was $868 million, a reversal that obviously upset Luke. As head of the House Finance Committee, Luke has an extraordinary degree of control over the budget and state spending.

In a testy exchange with Ige’s acting Director of Finance Scott Kami, Luke recounted the history of the school maintenance backlog, and noted lawmakers authorized borrowing money for years to commit a “substantial” amount of funding to try to reduce the repair and maintenance backlog in the schools.

Then they were told the scope of the problem had been misrepresented, and lawmakers’ efforts “have not even made a dent” in the problem, which was worse than anyone understood, she said.

“Doesn’t that bother you that after 10 years the backlog, after all the investment that the Legislature has made in reducing the backlog, has not decreased that amount?” Luke asked.

Kami replied, “I would say that I think we would want to work more with the department to identify why the numbers have changed.”

Luke said lawmakers might never learn exactly why the backlog was misrepresented to the public, but when lawmakers were told the backlog was $293 million, “that was a lie.” She also questioned the administration’s willingness to ask for more money for the department without determining what went wrong.

“I would think there has to be some effort, or has to be some active approach by your administration, to figure out not just what happened, but figure out, hey, maybe we need to take a different approach on what needs to be done,” she said. “I’m just trying to ask you to have a grasp on what’s going on instead of saying, ‘OK, we’re just going to do what we’ve been doing all these years.’”

Spokesmen for the DOE were not available to comment after the hearing, but officials from the department have said the full extent of the problem was discovered after a “deep dive” by a new leadership team.

Dann Carlson, assistant superintendent for school facilities and support services, has said DOE officials discovered that projects had been checked off the pending repair and maintenance list when initial funds were spent on them, even if the money spent was for design and not construction.

There was no automated system to track funded projects, and information about them was scattered throughout the bureaucracy. The DOE has since developed a comprehensive system for tracking 3,800 pending projects. That includes 696 roofing projects that are expected to cost $196 million, and another $185 million for grounds projects.

Luke, speaking at a joint budget briefing Thursday for the Senate Ways and Means and House Finance committees, also questioned Ige’s plan to spend $125 million for the Ala Wai Canal flood control project as a match for the federal funding.

“I want you guys to think about what you guys are doing to the future generation,” she said. “I want you guys to be a little bit worried about these new projects that you’re taking on, especially the City and County of Honolulu’s Ala Wai project.”

‘You need to think about what other debt are we giving to the future generation, because we haven’t made a dent in DOE,” she said.

Luke has said she considers the Ala Wai to be a city project and not a state responsibility.