Posted on: Tuesday, July 22, 2003

EDITORIAL
Secrecy ill-serves new UH medical center

A decision to draw a veil of privacy around much of the contract details of the University of Hawai'i's new $300 million medical school complex may make sense from the project managers' point of view, but it is a disservice to the public.

Those in charge of the project say they do not want to release details of subcontractors on the huge construction job for a variety of reasons.

First, they say releasing precise cost details for some subcontractors will make it more difficult to negotiate with other contractors. In addition, they say releasing such information would lead to the "frustration of a legitimate government function."

This is language picked up precisely from a 1997 opinion from the Office of Information Practices on a similar situation involving the Hawai'i Convention Center. The Advertiser had asked for a list of all contractors and subcontractors on the $200 million project as well as the contract value and services provided.

The prime contractor, Nordic/PCL, refused, saying release of such details would make it difficult to negotiate further subcontracts and would put winning contractors at a competitive disadvantage. Their competitors would know how much they bid and what they were being paid and thus could easily underbid them.

The Office of Information Practices agreed. It said release of the information would cause competitive harm to Nordic and could harm to entire project.

This, in turn, would amount to a "frustration of a legitimate government function," one of the exceptions to the state's open-records law.

And there is some logic to this argument.

But the university has taken a particularly hard line on this matter, saying the subcontractor information is not theirs to release, either now or after the project is finished.

The net result: millions of taxpayer dollars will be spent without any formal public disclosure of who got the money and how they earned it.

University officials might also wish to be aware of a subsequent legal challenge (by The Advertiser) that eventually pried loose those subcontractor records.

The Advertiser and the Convention Center Authority settled the lawsuit with the release of subcontractor information. This came after Circuit Judge Kevin Chang denied a state request to dismiss the lawsuit and commented that the public should have a right to know how its tax money is being spent on large government projects.

Our hope is that the same reasonable conclusion will be reached in this case. UH should use its good offices to persuade the prime contractor to release the details.

The new medical school complex promises to be a brilliant addition to Hawai'i's economic and educational strength. There's no point in sullying that by leaving the impression there is something about this project we should never be allowed to know.