Cost grows for delayed upgrade at Halawa Correctional Facility

Gov. David Ige’s administration has requested an additional $4.3 million to house Hawaii prison inmates on the mainland while contractors finish a long-­delayed overhaul of the electronic locks and video surveillance systems at Halawa Correctional Facility.

The latest request means the administration has now spent or asked lawmakers for permission to spend a total of $18.7 million to incarcerate prisoners in Arizona while work continues at Halawa on a project that was supposed to be completed in 2017.

The Halawa project has been managed by the state Department of Accounting and General Services, and the delays and unexpected costs are now taking on political overtones.

Former DAGS Comptroller Rod Becker was nominated by Ige to become the new director of the state Department of Budget and Finance. He oversaw the Halawa contract while serving as comptroller and head of DAGS from 2016 to last year.

It is still unclear whether the botched Halawa project could affect his Senate confirmation, but Ways and Means Committee Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz has repeatedly expressed concerns about the prison project.

“How is he going to be B&F director when you look at how all these things fall through the cracks?” Dela Cruz said. He declined to say if he plans to support Becker and said he has not polled his colleagues about the nomination.

Becker has said some senators raised concerns about the project when he approached them about his confirmation. However, “that hasn’t been raised by most people, actually. So, aside from that, I haven’t heard too many concerns,” he said.

Ige announced in early January he had appointed Becker as director of finance, but the governor still has not formally submitted his nomination to the Senate for confirmation. Ige’s chief of staff, Ford Fuchigami, has said the governor is giving his nominees time to meet with each state senator before sending down the official nominations.

Corrections officials emptied out portions of Halawa and sent hundreds of inmates to a prison on the mainland to clear the way for crews to install the new prison electronics. So instead of holding inmates at the state-owned Halawa facility, the state is paying a private prison operator to do so.

State Department of Public Safety Director Nolan Espinda told senators in January the job was originally supposed to take 11 months but work on the project started six months late. The project then stalled after subcontractor Hawaii Technologies did “substandard work, and so they were terminated off the job,” said Curt Otaguro, the new state comptroller.

The general contractor, BCP Construction of Hawaii Inc., acknowledged the problem and had to find a new subcontractor, which caused additional delays, Otaguro said. When the new subcontractor discovered newly installed electrical conduit that did not meet state specifications, the work had to be redone, he said.

“Call it mismanagement, call it taking your eye off the ball — we could have all done a better job, I think, as a state staying on top of BCP. They have acknowledged that they themselves needed to have a little tighter reins on their subs,” Otaguro said.

Those project delays are costing the state even more than the construction itself because of the cost of keeping inmates out of the work areas. One or another of the four housing modules have been kept vacant since 2016 to allow construction to proceed.

According to DAGS, the Halawa construction was originally supposed to cost $9.75 million but the total contract was later adjusted upward to more than $12.3 million.

Meanwhile, the DPS reported earlier this year it has spent more than $11 million housing the displaced prisoners in Arizona during construction, and this year has asked lawmakers for an additional $7.7 million to continue the arrangement in the months ahead.

The original completion date for the project was September 2017, Otaguro said.

The electrical and other work had been completed in two of Halawa’s four housing modules and in the prison’s administration offices, infirmary, food serv­ice area, program areas, gym, guard towers and others sections not used for inmate housing, according to DPS.

Work is underway in a third housing module, and the last module should be finished in November, Otaguro said. BCP has been “very cooperative” in fixing the problem and paying the associated costs, he said.

The bonding companies for BCP have acknowledged “they’re going to be liable” for at least some of the financial costs to the state for the delays on the project to offset the state’s expenses, Otaguro said.