I love it when state officials respond appreciatively to suggestions of citizens eager to help them better serve the public.

If only it ever happened that way.

In March, I questioned the state's practice of wasting precious water by sprinkling the newly planted hillside at Kailua's Castle Junction immediately after heavy rains.

Transportation director Rodney Haraga wrote a letter to the editor assuring readers that he had a good reason for the oddly timed watering, if only I had bothered to ask.

The state spent $7.8 million on grading and planting the hillside to prevent landslides, he explained, and needed frequent watering to bring the grass to maturity, head off erosion and protect the investment.

I still questioned the point of watering already saturated soil, but was satisfied that the matter was being reviewed and decided to let my remaining concerns slide.

That was until the rainy season returned and I recently saw the sprinklers running the day after a downpour that couldn't have possibly left the ground able to absorb more water.

A letter from Bob Tassie of Kailua nicely summed up the current situation at Mount St. Haraga: "Rarely do we get to see such a wide assortment of weeds grown in such a short time. The secret must be to water it only on rainy days."

That's right, the sprinklers are no longer watering grass, but ugly weeds.

The bottom of the hillside was planted in the middle of last year's storms, which washed away most of the Australian carpet grass seeds and bared the soil to an invasion of scrub grasses.

The well-watered kikuyu grass planted elsewhere on the slope has been mostly overtaken by tall weeds that the state has made little apparent effort to eradicate.

I guess they've moved on to other $7.8 million investments.

Equally frustrating was the follow-up on my June complaint to tax director Kurt Kawafuchi that my quarterly estimated income tax payment of $1,298 that I mailed on April 20 wasn't deposited by the state until June 14.

I told Kawafuchi that if the state had no current need for my money, I could certainly find a use for it.

I resented being threatened with fines for failing to pay on time, only to see timely payments sit endlessly on somebody's desk.

With the state collecting estimated taxes worth $200 million in the April quarter alone, I figured the annual lost interest from late deposits must be $1 million or more — indefensible for an administration always crying poverty until its election-year surplus materialized.

Kawafuchi denied that the problem was as bad as I described except in the April quarter, when tax collectors must deal with the main annual income tax filing deadline.

He said his department was working feverishly to automate the system.

Kawafuchi said a review of my file in recent years showed an average deposit lag of only two weeks — still twice as long as it takes the Internal Revenue Service to deposit my federal tax checks.

Naturally, I was interested to see how they would do with my Sept. 20 quarterly payment, especially since they knew I would be watching.

The check didn't clear until this Monday, more than a month after I mailed it.

If Kawafuchi can't figure it out, he should contact Bob Knowler, treasurer of Woodbury County in Sioux City, Iowa.

Knowler, with a staff of three, gets $120 million in property tax payments he collects twice a year ready for deposit the morning after they're received — except on the rush of deadline day, when he apologetically admits to a one-day deposit lag.

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