Professor seeks ethics review of Jones' contract
By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer
A University of Hawai'i professor has asked the state Ethics Commission to examine the legality of UH football coach June Jones' $800,000-per-year contract.
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Beverly Keever, a Journalism Department professor, also asked the state Office of Information Practices to compel the university to disclose the names of private donors who are paying half the annual cost of Jones' five-year contract.
Private donors are paying half of UH football coach June Jones' salary.
Keever and several news media outlets tried for years to get the university to publicly release Jones' first contract, signed in late 1998, which was finally disclosed last month under instructions from the OIP. Last week, Jones' new contract was released, but it does not identify private individuals contributing money through the University of Hawai'i Foundation to pay half of Jones' contract.
Keever said in a letter to the OIP that "without public disclosure of the identities of those donors ... citizens and even appropriate official agencies will be unable to assess whether conflict of interests or other problems arise."
Ethics Commission executive director Daniel Mollway has said that the issue of paying a public official with a combination of public and private money has never been examined by Ethics Commission.
"Once you start going down the road of having the private sector pick up the tab of government officials, I think it does create serious, serious problems, and they ought to be brought to the Ethics Commission," Mollway said in January.
Reach Jim Dooley at 535-2447 or at jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.
