Posted on: Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Legislators' ethics questioned
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Education Writer
An attorney has asked the Hawai'i State Ethics Commission to investigate whether two prominent Democratic state lawmakers improperly used state time and facilities for political campaigning.
Joseph Gomes, a Waimanalo attorney and former Republican state lawmaker, filed ethics complaints in late July against state Sen. Norman Sakamoto, D-15th (Waimalu, Airport, Salt Lake), and state Rep. Roy Takumi, D-36th (Pearl City, Palisades), the main architects of an education-reform law approved by the state Legislature this year.
The complaints cite a string of e-mail started by a Hawai'i State Teachers Association official that refers to a meeting between the official and Sakamoto and Takumi on how the union could help Democrats use education reform to get elected to the state House and Senate.
The union planned education forums at public schools where state schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto would give a status report on the law and lawmakers or candidates could talk about education. Maurice Morita, who handles government relations with the HSTA, wrote that the union "wanted to look at candidates who have contentious races."
But Hamamoto said, and her own e-mail shows, that she backed out of the forums after she was told of the political aspect, and the HSTA, which has supported the Democrats on education, abandoned the events. Joan Husted, the union's executive director, said yesterday that Morita was being "overly enthusiastic."
Sakamoto and Takumi dismissed the complaints yesterday. They said the complaints only show they received e-mail from Morita at their offices about the forums. "We receive what we receive," Sakamoto said. "It's not something where I was using state resources to do something political."
The lawmakers — chairmen of the Senate and House education committees — have frequently appeared this year at public forums sponsored by a variety of interest groups. Takumi said he would have participated at the HSTA's forums but believed they would be used to inform the community about education, not to call for the election of specific candidates.
Gomes, who lost a re-election campaign in 2002, said the e-mail shows the lawmakers knew of the politics behind the school forums. "It certainly seems like they were in the loop," he said.
Two members of the Board of Education, meanwhile, called for a separate investigation yesterday into whether upcoming forums planned by the state school board have now been tainted by partisan politics.
Laura H. Thielen, a school board member who was part of Gov. Linda Lingle's unsuccessful campaign to break the state Department of Education into local school boards, and Shelton Jim On, who was appointed by Lingle to fill a board vacancy last year, said Hamamoto or school board members should not participate in the forums, or similar events, until ethics questions have been resolved.
Hamamoto is expected to speak tonight at a town meeting on education in Waipahu sponsored by Democratic lawmakers that had been planned since June. "I think we now have a question regarding the motivation of that meeting," Thielen said.
Under the education-reform law, the school board is required to hold at least 14 community meetings each year as part of an outreach effort to improve the board's presence across the Islands. The board's chairman, Breene Harimoto, wants to hold as many as 30 meetings over the next several months.
Harimoto was mentioned in the HSTA's e-mail as a co-sponsor of the union events, but he said last night that the board's forums were always intended to be separate, even though the union and other education and business groups could be invited. He said the board's forums are not politically motivated.
"There was no directive to do this before the elections," he said.
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
