Kobayashi lobbied for rehab program

By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Ten months before she was elected to the City Council, Ann Kobayashi lobbied Councilman Steve Holmes for a $500,000 grant to Fresh Start Inc., a Waipahu structured living facility now under investigation by the state attorney general's office.

Ann Kobayashi said she has "no recollection" of a lobbying meeting with Councilman Steve Holmes. Advertiser library photo

And when questioned by The Advertiser last week, Kobayashi first denied the lobbying.

"I didn't," she said last week from her council office. "I never came here (Honolulu Hale) to lobby. I never went to any hearings. Nothing."

But Holmes said Kobayashi and Barker visited him March 16, 2001, to request the $500,000 grant.

Holmes supplied a copy of a sign-in sheet Kobayashi and Barker signed the day they came to visit. It identifies both as representing Fresh Start Inc., though Fresh Start was never registered as a lobbyist.

"They came in, just the two of them, they asked for a lot of money from the city for their program," Holmes said. "I call that lobbying."

Shown the sign-in sheet and her signature, Kobayashi acknowledged she must have been at the meeting but said she has "no recollection of it at all."

The $500,000 grant that Kobayashi and Barker requested last year was added to the budget by Councilman John DeSoto. But after an anonymous letter circulated to city and state officials in May 2001, the Hawai'i congressional delegation, members of the judiciary and law enforcement officials that alleged wrongdoing on Barker's part, the money was deleted from the budget, said DeSoto aide Pam Witty-Oakland.

Fresh Start is under a criminal investigation by the state attorney general's office, which is examining claims by Fresh Start residents and their families that Barker pressured them for money and threatened to have authorities send them back to prison or jail if they did not pay.

Barker said in an interview with The Advertiser last week that nobody was pressured. He said he charges residents with the ability to pay an $1,800 registration fee and $1,800 monthly rent. He said that he does not prohibit those who cannot pay from entering the program if he deems them qualified to stay at Fresh Start. He added that all of the 68 people who reside at Fresh Start are contributing just their $360 monthly welfare payments, which is not enough to cover the costs of housing, feeding and treating them.

"People who want to get into my program are the ones who send me letters and cannot get in anywhere else," he said. "I do ask families for donations. I do apply for grants. The judiciary, the paroling authority, they don't pay me to take people in. But if you don't have the money, we'll take you anyway."

Kobayashi said that during her time on the Fresh Start board, she never heard concerns expressed about Barker or his operation. She said she joined the board just as it was getting started in 1997 because it seemed committed to helping with alternatives to incarceration.

A former state senator, she said she had taken a special interest in prison reform and was eager to help a program that would assist those who had run afoul of the law. She looked at various programs, even joining one called Project Renewal, but she said it never got off the ground so Kobayashi looked elsewhere.

"It's just so expensive — $60,000 a year the state pays per prisoner," Kobayashi said. "And they go in prison, come out, go back in again, a revolving door. There's no healing, no rehabilitation."

She soon met Barker, who had just opened a 95-bed facility at Pupuole Place in Waipahu, which has since expanded to 125 beds.

Over a year's time in 1997 and 1998, Kobayashi served on a board that included Barker, his wife, Norma Jean, and University of Hawai'i nursing school professor Ute Goldkuhler but she said the group met about three times and she left after about a year.

"I remember getting discouraged," she said. "It's such a hard thing to do, operate that kind of program. No one wants to do it, wants to help."

Kobayashi said after a year or so of service on the Fresh Start board, she "decided to change focus, to work on children's programs."

She said she lost contact with Barker after that, "although I would run into him occasionally at the Legislature or City Hall."

When Kobayashi mounted her successful City Council election campaign late last year, Barker was there to help. Groups of as many as 50 Fresh Start residents were transported in the program's vehicles from Waipahu to the Manoa-Makiki area to wave political signs for the candidate.

"When I decided to run for office again, he offered to help with sign wavers," she said. "I thought it was a good idea, a way to get the (Fresh Start) residents involved in the system, interested in civics. He wanted to send 50 people, but I had to tell him that was too many, that 20 was better."

Kobayashi donated $200 to Fresh Start this year, after she was elected to office, but said there was no connection between the donation and the political support she received from the organization.

Two Fresh Start residents told The Advertiser that waving signs for Kobayashi was not voluntary, that Barker threatened to terminate residents and send them "back to valley" if they didn't participate. That was a reference, they said, to Halawa Correctional Facility in Halawa Valley.

Barker denied those charges, saying they came from disgruntled former Fresh Start clients who had been terminated from the program for drug use and other violations.

Nonprofit organizations such as Fresh Start are prohibited from involvement in political campaigns by the federal tax code. Political lobbying is a permitted activity, subject to spending limits established by the IRS. Fresh Start reported no lobbying expenditures for the years 1997 through 2000. Its tax return for 2001 is not yet publicly available. The IRS declined comment on questions about the organization's involvement in political campaigning and lobbying.

In pushing for the $500,000 grant from the city, Fresh Start should have registered as a lobbyist and designated Barker and Kobayashi as its official representatives. No such paperwork was filed. Barker and Kobayashi both said they were unfamiliar with the city's lobbyist registration law.

"I didn't know anything about that requirement," Kobayashi said. "I probably violated that."

The penalty for failing to register as a lobbyist is suspension or revocation of lobbying activities for up to one year. The City Clerk's office administers the lobbyist registration system. City Clerk Genny Wong said that in her memory, no one has ever been punished for illegal lobbying activities.

Now chairwoman of the council's budget committee, the same position Holmes held when Kobayashi lobbied him, Kobayashi decided earlier this month to divert a $50,000 grant intended for Fresh Start to another nonprofit agency until the criminal investigation is resolved. If the agency is cleared, she said, it can re-apply later for another grant.

Kobayashi said that although she served on Fresh Start's board and enjoyed the organization's political support, she has not contacted Barker since news of the criminal investigation became public.

"I haven't talked to Ron at all," she said.