Posted on: Monday, September 22, 2003

EDITORIAL
Jones' contract: Money Laundering 101

University of Hawai'i football coach June Jones' contract has been the talk of the town. Some lament that community colleges were talking about cutting back classes while Jones was bringing down $800,016 a year. Others declared that no price was too steep to get a winning team in Manoa.

Now we know that, in the event he meets all the goals of bonus clauses in the new five-year contract, Jones could make $930,000.

We'll leave it to better minds to decide whether Jones is worth his paycheck, given that he will make more than three-fourths as much as University of Southern California coach Pete Carroll, and a lot more than UNLV coach John Robinson. That some of the details of Carroll's contract at USC might not be publicly known doesn't bother us in the least, because USC is a private institution (and incredibly well-endowed, at that). UH is a struggling state university, and Jones is a public employee.

The fact that his new contract ensures that he'll be making more money than any other public employee in Hawai'i has ever made argues more strongly, not less, for full disclosure of how much Jones will receive and where it will come from.

The state Office of Information Practices agrees, and we were under the impression that so did UH President Evan Dobelle.

Were we misled? The public is still in the dark as to where at least half of Jones' compensation will come from.

UH officials announced in June that UH would pay Jones $400,008, and that private donors would match that amount. But, reports Advertiser sports writer Dayton Morinaga, neither the names of the private donors nor the intent of those private donors to match the UH salary can be found in the contract.

That information remains secret. The donors, says UH athletic director Herman Frazier, "are pillars of the community who want to see the University of Hawai'i be successful. If they don't want the public to know who they are, that's their right."

No it isn't. The public's right to know trumps the inclination for privacy in this instance.

It appears UH is running these donations through the University of Hawai'i Foundation, because it doesn't release the names of donors. UH thus becomes the first university in the nation to offer a course in Money Laundering 101.