Posted on: Tuesday, July 1, 2003

EDITORIAL
What of Lingle's grand plans for Higa?

It wasn't that long ago that Gov. Linda Lingle was heralding state Auditor Marion Higa as the government fat buster. Under the heading of Making Government Work Better in her "New Beginning" pamphlet, she pledged to authorize a complete, independent audit of the state's finances in cooperation with Higa.

But that mission to root out government waste begins to ring hollow in the face of Lingle's veto of legislation that would have boosted Higa's ability to scrutinize the administration's spending of public money and create a centralized government auditing system.

As it is, Higa conducts managerial audits, and private firms conduct financial audits. The money state departments spend on federal government-required audits is generally reimbursed.

Under one of the vetoed bills, Higa's office would have administered all contracts for external audits, which cost about $5 million a year. A revolving fund would pay for the audits, and that money would be reimbursed.

But Lingle finds that system to be "unduly cumbersome and potentially wasteful." If the Legislature wants to take a closer look at certain departments, it's free to do so but would have to appropriate the money, the governor said.

So after all the campaign rhetoric about having Higa track down government waste and fraud, Lingle leaves the state auditor to do pretty much the same job she's always done.

In fact, now she's complaining that the problems uncovered in previous audits were often ignored. The simple solution here is to give Higa the authority to do her job, and not ignore the results.