EDITORIAL
State housing charges must have resolution

We hope the changing of the guard on the State Capitol's fifth floor will bring needed clarity to the troubled and controversial state Housing and Community Development Corp.

Sen. Ron Menor, who chairs the Senate Commerce, Consumer Protection and Housing Committee, suggests the bitter dispute between the Cayetano administration's public housing agency and the Bush administration's Housing and Urban Development Department should lead to a tweaking of state ethics and procurement rules.

We have no doubt those rules need improvement, but we wonder if that's the entire answer in the case of HCDCH.

At issue is the award of contracts by the executive director of the agency, Sharon Miyashiro, to firms headed by her ex-husband, with whom she had continuing financial dealings, and his brother.

It's astonishing to hear that Hawai'i conflict of interest law doesn't outlaw such conflicts, but since Miyashiro, her board and even Cayetano have defended them as legal, perhaps Menor is right — the statute is deficient.

Beyond that, however, are more troubling matters, such as missing key documents, reported by Advertiser reporter Jim Dooley in October.

And there's at least the suggestion from HUD that the contracts involved real impropriety, including the charge that one contract was improperly increased by 57 percent.

According to HUD Assistant Secretary Michael Liu, that included a charge of $2,500 "for a closet door that could have easily been purchased for $500."

It was when the charges thus escalated that this newspaper called for a federal criminal investigation. There's no sign of that yet, but Cayetano's Attorney General's Office said it would look into the matter.

Hanging over this entire affair, however, is a thick and confusing cloud of political implication. We're hard-pressed to accept that it's entirely coincidental that the HUD demands of HCDCH reached a crescendo in the week before the Nov. 5 election.

Liu — a former Hawai'i Republican politician — has demanded a complete housecleaning at HCDCH, with replacement of Miyashiro and its board, plus restitution of $771,000, the cost of a contract awarded to a company founded and partly owned by her ex-husband.

We'll be waiting to see how HUD treats the housing agency under Gov. Linda Lingle's administration.

Will HUD still demand restitution? Will it continue to threaten to cut off the state's $25 million a year in housing subsidies?

And will Lingle's new attorney general, Mark Bennett, press his predecessor's investigation through to a conclusion? We insist that he do so, and report fully on how much of this affair was a) corruption, b) careless management, c) hard-ball partisan politics or d) all of the above.