Posted on: Wednesday, March 12, 2003

EDITORIAL
Public loses as paroling chairman resigns

Gov. Linda Lingle has saved us all quite a bit of unpleasantness, we suppose, by allowing Al Beaver, the Hawai'i Paroling Authority chairman, to resign instead of facing public hearings on the charges against him.

He's been on paid administrative leave while the Department of Public Safety investigated allegations, detailed by Advertiser investigative reporter Jim Dooley in November, that he improperly ordered his staff to prepare a commutation request for a prison inmate and had personal business dealings with another man given an early discharge from parole.

Beaver, 59, developed a get-tough reputation by imposing stricter rules that returned more parole violators to prison, which caused a big jump in the prison population. His lawyer, Paul Cunney, suggests Beaver is being made a "fall guy" for having sent "all these hard cases away for a long time."

Thus Beaver, in choosing retirement over public hearings, sacrifices his opportunity to defend his reputation. That, of course, is his choice.

But the real loser in this choice is the public. Unfortunately, it's often through painful confrontation with the facts that progress is generated. By allowing Beaver to leave office quietly without any accounting for these allegations, the public loses the opportunity to learn, for instance, what procedures in the paroling process might need tweaking by lawmakers.

Cunney says Lingle's attorney general, Mark Bennett, has determined that none of Beaver's actions were illegal. If that's so, it's good that what we're seeing here is not a lawbreaker being allowed to walk free.

But if the allegations against him are valid, then perhaps the system he oversaw needs reform.