Posted on: Friday, June 13, 2003

Tourism board wants review kept secret

By Kelly Yamanouchi
Advertiser Staff Writer

The Hawai'i Tourism Authority is following a state auditor's recommendation that it evaluate itself each year, but board members don't want to make the results public.

Instead, the board decided yesterday to allow its chairman to cull through the evaluation and summarize the results.

"They wanted to have it confidential so that everybody could speak their mind," said tourism authority Executive Director Rex Johnson.

None of the board members opposed the idea of keeping the evaluation itself secret, but board chairman Mike McCartney said he plans today to ask for an opinion from the state Office of Information Practices on what the authority can keep confidential.

The self-evaluation could be particularly critical following harsh comments directed at the tourism authority during Gov. Linda Lingle's tourism summit last month.

A report from one committee at the summit, co-chaired by John Toner who has since joined the authority board, called HTA "dysfunctional," and said there is a perception that several board members made decisions with their own interests in mind.

Some board members challenged the criticism.

"We have a disconnect about the politics of the board and ... what's actually getting done," said board member Ron Wright. He said there are no facts to support the idea that board members acted in their own interests in financing decisions.

The authority was first advised by state deputy attorney general Linden Joesting that the results of its evaluation would need to be made public, but she later noted an exception to the state open records law that would allow the authority to withhold information "if it frustrates a legitimate government function."

Board member Sharon Weiner said a confidential evaluation would allow members to be more self-critical and would be more useful in improving the authority.

McCartney said his report would be completed by the next meeting of the board or the following meeting.

The authority's board also:

• Approved as expected a $69 million budget for the fiscal year starting July 1. The budget includes about $34 million for major marketing contracts, or about $1.5 million less than the previous year.

• Evaluated Johnson in a closed-door session. The review covered his first eight months as executive director and resulted in an "excellent evaluation," McCartney said.

"The board was very pleased with his performance," McCartney said, and gave Johnson a score of 5.6 out of 7 points. The rating means he exceeds expectations, McCartney said. The board is keeping Johnson's annual salary at $240,000.

• Approved a plan to evaluate the state's tourism marketing contractors. The authority's marketing committee will soon be recommending who among the contract bidders should get the contracts, worth about $25.25 million. The full board is scheduled to make a final decision at its July meeting.

The marketing committee is chaired by Weiner and includes Toner, Kyoko Kimura and Lorrie Lee Stone. The authority is taking recommendations for additional committee members, none of whom can have any substantial conflicts of interest.

"We're trying to avoid any semblance of impropriety," Weiner said.

Johnson also said the authority has drafted a letter to Hawai'i's congressional delegation asking for help in keeping a convention of the American Society of Military Comptrollers. The group has been attempting to cancel the meeting. The action follows a Department of Defense rule curtailing meetings outside of the continental United States.

Reach Kelly Yamanouchi at 535-2470, or at kyamanouchi@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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