Officials at the Honolulu rail authority will wait until Russell Yamanoha is sentenced in federal court in December before deciding how his criminal conviction for helping to rig a union election might affect his city job.
Yamanoha, 52, is back at work at the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation after pleading guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge for helping to falsify the vote count in a 2015 election for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1260.
HART Executive Director Andrew Robbins told reporters Thursday that Yamanoha “does a good job for HART. My understanding is that he has now pled guilty on a misdemeanor charge on an unrelated matter, something outside his employment with HART.”
Sentencing is scheduled for early December, “and I think we need to wait and see what the judge decides on what the sentencing is. At that time we’ll make a decision on what to do based on the sentencing,” Robbins said. “At this point in time he’s doing a good job at HART, and there’s no real valid reason for us to change his employment status.”
Others disagree. Honolulu City Council Chairman Ikaika Anderson said that “Mr. Yamanoha pleaded guilty. As far as I’m concerned, his employment with HART should be pau.”
“It goes to trust. To me, the charge that he pleaded guilty to speaks to his lack of being trustworthy. Yes, he made a mistake, but the charge that he pleaded guilty to really amounts to lack of trust, so to me his employment should be pau,” Anderson said.
House Finance Committee Chairwoman Sylvia Luke said public opinion of rail and HART is “pretty low” and that officers of the rail authority have a duty to do what they can to restore confidence and rebuild trust in the authority.
“Even if it’s not rail- related, if you have an individual who has pled guilty in a criminal case, I think there is a responsibility of HART to take action,” she said. “It’s not as if this is a situation where we’re still waiting for trial and we’re trying to determine if there is guilt or not. It’s a situation where the individual has already pled.”
HART is now the subject of an federal criminal investigation that involves the FBI, and a federal grand jury issued subpoenas this year for tens of thousands of HART documents. Federal authorities have also subpoenaed several HART employees for interviews, but it is unclear what the focus of the investigation might be.
Yamanoha is a former TV sports anchor who went to work for the city rail authority in 2017, and earns $88,248 a year with HART as an information specialist.
He pleaded guilty Tuesday to working with other union members to rig an IBEW Local 1260 election on Guam on Jan. 29, 2015. Yamanoha was director of media for the union at the time.
According to federal court records, he and three others met in the Guam Hilton to prepare fake ballots indicating “yes” votes for a proposal to more than double union dues. Later that day, members of the group replaced the real ballots from the election with fake ones to assure that the dues increase was approved.
Yamanoha started work for HART in 2017, and his job title is information specialist. His public duties include staffing news conferences and distributing news releases and other material on behalf of the rail authority, and he also has been listed on HART news releases as the media point of contact.
