At its Jan. 27 hearing, members of the House Investigative Committee to Investigate Compliance with Audit Nos. 19-12 and 21-01 discussed a request they had received from Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter Dan Nakaso for a copy of the committee’s unfinished draft report provided to us and other witnesses. In support of committee Chairwoman Rep. Della Au Belatti’s recommendation to deny the request, another committee member stated that while she normally favors transparency, she had concerns about being held “politically accountable” and “punished politically” for expressing unpopular positions before reaching a consensus or compromise.

Three days later, the committee released its final report’s executive summary and recommendations. Included are 11 recommendations regarding the Office of the Auditor, the most serious of which call for the establishment of an audit committee to oversee the Office of the Auditor as well as further investigation of the office’s operations: by the Legislature, by an independent third-party and even by the Department of the Attorney General based on Rep. Belatti’s contrived accusations of witness tampering and other wrongdoing.

However, according to Rep. Belatti, those recommendations won’t be addressed by the Legislature during the current session.

“There was a lot of value of the investigative committee … to improve the state,” she told the Star-Advertiser. “But the political temperature around this will not result in productive legislation (regarding Kondo and his office), even though I think it’s important.”

Rep. Belatti’s comment about “political temperature” and her colleague’s concern about the dangers of transparency and public accountability tell us all we need to know about the committee’s final report and the process that created it.

While breathless accusations and innuendo may make for good political theater, when you have to put pen to paper and prove your claims, the facts and the truth matter.

I testified three times at the start of the investigation and spoke about our audits’ findings and recommendations and the procedures and processes behind that work. After Rep. Belatti announced the committee was expanding its investigation to include my office, she announced that I would be invited back.

That would have only been fair, but that never happened.

While the report’s overtly personal attacks are inappropriate (if not illegal), my efforts to call into question the expanded investigation’s legitimacy and refute its conclusions have always been about ensuring the integrity and independence of the Office of the Auditor and protecting staff, whose work has been unfairly questioned and whose professionalism and integrity have been repeatedly attacked.

But this attack goes beyond me and my office. An investigative committee exercises awesome — nearly unlimited — powers. It controls the questions that can be asked, and it need not attempt to balance its perspective with contrary perspectives.

In other words, it need not tell the whole story. That is why the Hawaii statute governing legislative investigative committees requires the committee to conduct its hearings “in a fair and impartial manner.” Rep. Belatti’s and certain other committee members’ disinterest in a fair, impartial, or even honest inquiry coupled with their call for never-ending investigations should be a grave concern for anyone who believes in good government.

Unlike certain committee members, the auditor cannot raise a finger to the political winds before drafting and releasing reports nor bend to any political influence exerted by others, including individual legislators.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that this office will come under criticism and attack. But we will do everything we can to preserve the public’s trust in government, vigorously protecting our independence so we can continue working to improve government through unbiased, objective, and fact-based analyses.

The Office of the Auditor submitted a detailed response to the committee’s Dec. 30, 2021, draft report (https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Informational/220128mediastmt.pdf) and will respond to the “new” material contained in the final report in a forthcoming supplemental response, which will be posted at: https://auditor.hawaii.gov/working-group-and-house-investigative-committee/.

Les Kondo has been the state auditor since 2016; he previously was executive director of the State Ethics Commission and director of the Office of Information Practice.