State Auditor Les Kondo has blasted a draft report of a five-month-long special House Investigative Committee that was created to scrutinize two audits but quickly expanded into an investigation of Kondo and his office.
In his reply to a draft report of the committee’s work sent to him just before the New Year’s holiday weekend, Kondo said it smelled of a “deliberate political ‘hit job’” and was not conducted in a “fair and impartial manner.”
The auditor’s response, dated Jan. 14, called the draft report “incomplete” and “entirely devoid of any findings whatsoever.”
In place of “facts,” Kondo said the draft report relies on “commentaries” that are “riddled with misinterpretations, errors, and inaccuracies.”
He quoted a recommendation in the committee’s draft report that calls for further investigation of Kondo and his office: “The Committee recommends further investigation into the Office of the Auditor by the House of Representatives, a future investigative committee, or an independent third party that can conduct a thorough performance audit of the Office of the Auditor.”
Kondo also quoted remarks in the draft report by committee member Rep. Dale Kobayashi (D, Manoa-Punahou-Moiliili), “the only professional auditor on the committee,” that characterized the criticisms contained therein as “mostly innuendo” that “seemed designed to cast a negative light on the Office of the Auditor. … Much of what was said pertaining to the auditor was way over the line and can even be construed as defamatory.”
As for Kobayashi’s assessment of the document as a whole, according to Kondo, “Much of what is said in this report is incorrect and improper.”
Speaking for himself, Kondo went on to write in his reply, “To be honest, we believe the people of Hawaii are tired of these kinds of political machinations and maneuvers.”
Kobayashi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kondo provided his comments on the draft report to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in response to a request under the Uniform Information Practices Act and federal Freedom of Information Act.
House Majority Leader Rep. Della Au Belatti (D, Moiliili-Makiki-Tantalus), chairwoman of the special House Investigative Committee, did not immediately provide the draft report in response to a similar UIPA/FOIA request from the Star-Advertiser. She acknowledged in an email Friday that she had received the newspaper’s request Thursday for the document.
“I have referred this request to our House attorney and Chief Clerk and we are working on a response to your request consistent with the applicable statutes and rules,” she said.
Belatti’s email included an earlier correspondence to Kondo in which she wrote:
“Again, I reiterate, at this time, Mr. Kondo is not authorized to release the draft report or portions of the draft report pursuant to our House Investigative Committee Rules and does not have authorization as I clearly explained in the letter to all subpoenaed witnesses dated December 30, 2021. The Committee is publicly scheduled to meet on Thursday, January 27, 2021, and can take up this matter of the disclosure of the Committee’s draft report. To the extent that portions of the Committee’s draft report are part of the Office of the Auditor’s report, I urge the exercise of caution and professional judgment.”
The special House Investigative Committee was created by resolution on the final day of the 2021 legislative session to look into separate critical audits overseen by Kondo of management of state lands by the Agribusiness Development Corp. in 2021 and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources in 2019.
Hearings that began in September were originally scheduled to wrap up in October, with a report to the House due in November. Instead, the hearings continued, and Belatti last week requested a 10-day extension to finish the final report. Kondo will not be offered the opportunity to respond to the final version.
The deadline for the investigative committee’s final report to House Speaker Scott Saiki is Saturday.
In his Jan. 14 reply to the draft report, Kondo said that a Jan. 10 committee hearing “descended into a circuslike atmosphere when the chair threatened to refer the Auditor for prosecution on charges of tampering with a witness.”
Belatti, Kondo said, oversaw hearings that were “designed to reinforce the false impression that the Auditor had engaged in nefarious criminal conduct. She then threatened the Auditor with a referral for prosecution for witness tampering. Maybe this makes for what the chair considers good political theater. But it is in fact an abuse of power, and everyone knows that. This ‘investigation’ may represent a new low in Hawai‘i power politics.
“The chair has elected to use her power and position on an investigative committee to conduct an ugly political smear campaign against the one office in state government (other than the judiciary) deliberately created under the Hawai‘i constitution to be free from unwarranted political interference,” Kondo wrote. “If this committee’s draft report contains numerous statements that meet the standard for defaming a public figure — knowing falsity or reckless disregard for truth or falsity — then the draft report is not a reliable document.”
State Rep. Gene Ward (R, Hawaii Kai-Kalama) has been following the committee’s work and, like Kobayashi, has publicly criticized its focus on the auditor, which he characterized in an email last week to the Star-Advertiser as a case of “Don’t kill the messenger if you don’t like his message.”
“While I applaud the formation of a House Investigative Committee (which we have not had for a number of blue moons), unfortunately this one has become too personal and too political rather than professional and objective,” Ward said in his email. “The real issue before the committee and its reason for convening was the poor performance of the DLNR’s special land development fund and the Agriculture Development Corporation — not Les Kondo. Instead some leaders at the Capitol have made this investigation about Les Kondo himself rather than the incompetence and lack of professionalism his audits have found to be present in these state programs.
“The committee had 25 informational briefings, listened to over two dozen subpoenaed witnesses and reviewed over 26,000 pages of documents, but the vast majority of the hearing time was … spent investigating the past actions of Kondo, interviewing people who had previously worked for him and examining the auditor’s work product and procedures,” Ward said.
