Posted on: Wednesday, August 4, 2004

VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

The botched firing of University of Hawai'i President Evan Dobelle by UH regents leaves Gov. Linda Lingle's administration with a major black eye.

Regents spared the university an ugly legal battle by settling with Dobelle on severance pay, but persist in secrecy about why they initially claimed cause to fire Dobelle for wrongdoing and then backed down.

Their amateurish governance of UH has drawn rebukes from accrediting boards for micromanagement and inappropriate politicking.

The incompetence reflects directly on Lingle, who prides herself above all else on her management ability.

This total reshaping of the university that seemed to become a priority only after Dobelle endorsed Lingle's opponent Mazie Hirono in 2002 has been anything but pretty as a management model.

The regents act independently of the governor in theory, but Lingle was quick to back them when they fired Dobelle, issuing an empty promise that proof of cause would be forthcoming.

Whatever her level of direct involvement, the governor laid the groundwork for the fiasco by appointing regents who were long on political loyalty to her but short on qualifications to run a major university — exactly the opposite kind of management she promised.

The debacle opens Lingle to judgment by the same harsh standards her regents applied to Dobelle.

For instance, Dobelle was criticized for failing to deliver on big promises he made when he was hired in 2001. A recent review of Lingle's delivery on her own campaign promises by Forbes magazine, usually a cheerleader for Republicans, couldn't credit her with much more than improving animal quarantine laws.

Lingle is quick to note that she has a four-year term to keep her promises, which is fair enough.

But she and her regents gave Dobelle less than three years of his seven-year term to keep his promises — undermining him at every turn in the final year.

Dobelle took heat for hiring former associates from the Mainland.

Well, two of his "cronies" who bailed out of UH were quickly snapped up by Stanford and Harvard universities.

Do you think the fact that what's good enough for Stanford and Harvard isn't good enough for us might have anything to do with why our university is among the national leaders in underachievement?

Lingle has her own questions of cronyism to answer for, starting with her appointments to the UH regents. She sent in an expeditionary force to shake up UH led by friend and adviser Kitty Lagareta, former GOP state chairwoman Jane Tatibouet and her former labor negotiator, Ted Hong.

Regents apparently tried to pin cause on Dobelle for questionable spending from his UH Foundation protocol fund — non-state money that was loosely accounted for long before Dobelle's arrival.

If this rises to the "moral turpitude" required by Dobelle's contract to establish cause, perhaps we should look more closely at Lingle's sanction by the Ethics Commission for spending $30,000 in state money to run a private lobbying group out of her office.

Lingle dismissed it as a "very inadvertent, innocent violation," which sounds a lot like Dobelle's explanation of the protocol fund.

The only saving grace for Lingle is that her Democratic opponents can't make political hay of the Dobelle disaster.

Leading Democratic lawmakers such as Rep. K. Mark Takai and Sen. Donna Kim gave her political cover with their own vicious attacks against Dobelle.

Still, the ineptitude has left a bad taste with enough voters that Lingle and her regents had better have the university humming by the time she comes up for re-election in 2006.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.