Tourism board to buy security gear for police

By Michele Kayal
Advertiser Staff Writer

The Hawai'i Tourism Authority yesterday agreed to provide Honolulu police with $525,000 to purchase security equipment for the Asian Development Bank meeting here in May.

The board oversees the Hawai'i Convention Center, where the meeting of international financial dignitaries will be held, and approved the measure as an agent of the center interested in protecting the building.

The members also said providing the money to Honolulu police, who will use it to purchase riot gear, is consistent with the policy of the state to support international meetings. The 13-member authority is a governor-appointed board responsible for setting the state's tourism agenda.

"The reality of this meeting, if successful, is it allows the state to get into a new market," said board vice chairman David Carey, who is also the chief executive officer of Outrigger Enterprises. "There's been talk for years about making this into an East-West meeting place. We've failed to put on major events that do that."

Finance ministers for the bank's 60 member nations will gather at the meeting to review the multilateral organization's programs aimed at improving conditions in developing nations. An estimated 3,000 participants — including about 1,000 business people from the Islands — will take part in four days of seminars, receptions and ceremonies.

The board deferred action on the matter last month because it could not make the link between its mission of promoting tourism and the request to provide local police with money for security equipment.

"The authority was looking for a legitimate basis in its charter to approve this," said the authority's chief executive officer Robert Fishman.

The request for money came from Gov. Ben Cayetano, who asked the board to provide $518,637. It was unclear why the board raised the amount to a maximum of $525,000.

"They just rounded it up," Fishman said, adding that he did not have an answer as to why. "That's the way the draft was rewritten."

Lawmakers have been scrutinizing the board's accountability procedures for the past few weeks in legislative hearings.