Nepo babies: A new law banning “nepotism” went into effect on 11 July, and already some state officials are scrambling to keep their relatives’ paychecks coming.
The Hawaii State Ethics Commission is no pushover.
The law prohibits hiring or supervising a relative or household member, or awarding contracts to businesses owned by relatives or household members.
Brickwood Galuteria, the former state senator who’s now a trustee of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, asked the Ethics Commission in late July for a “good cause” exception to the law. He wanted his daughter to work in his office. The commission said ‘no’, although it did grant a temporary exemption for three months.
The commission also rejected a request by a UH athletics officer, Daniel Arakaki, to hire his stepson to maintain the school’s swimming pools. In this case, the stepson had been cleaning the two pools and had done a good job, the commission said.
“You indicate that the pool position was difficult to fill. Advertising was by word of mouth,” the Commission’s letter said.
But that’s not enough to prove that there are “good reasons” to make an exception.
“As limited recruitment efforts have been made here – mainly by word of mouth – it does not appear that good cause exists,” the Commission said. “If more extensive recruitment efforts are made and no qualified candidates are found, good cause may be established in the future.”
But the commission did allow the daughter of Daniel Espaniola, the principal of Kaunakakai Elementary School, to continue working as the school’s preschool special education teacher – as long as Espaniola does not supervise her. She was the only person to apply for the job on remote Molokai, and her father did not attend the interview.
And an acting administrator at the Department of Accounting and General Services, Richard Lewis, was allowed to hire his brother as a temporary civil engineer. The reason: DAGS was unable to fill the position.
Lone ranger: The life of the late State Senator Sam Slom will be remembered this Sunday in the building where he spent so much time, the Hawaii State Capitol.
A Republican with a libertarian streak who represented Hawaii Kai, Aina Haina, Kahala and Diamond Head, he was in the minority in another sense: the sponsor of many bills aimed at improving local government.
In his last full year in office, in 2016, for example, Slom called for term limits for his colleagues, for referendums and recalls of officials, for a unicameral legislature, for no bill to become law if it no longer reflected its original purpose (gut and replace, anyone?), and for a fiscal impact statement to be attached to any bill that involved an appropriation or significant fiscal change for the state.
Of course, they all died, most of them without a hearing. Slom also unveiled an online tool in 2015 to make the state budget more transparent and useful to the public – the exact opposite of the way the budget is prepared under Democratic Party rule, seemingly by design.
And the good senator regularly presented an alternative biennial budget that often (by his estimate) saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course, they were never adopted.
Help wanted: Here’s your chance to learn all about how the political sausage is made. The state Senate and House of Representatives are now hiring for a variety of session staff positions.
Jobs include legislative aide, committee clerk, program budget analyst, data entry clerk, receptionist, service aide, remote hearing support staff, legislative attorney and more, according to a recent House press release.
The jobs are temporary, usually from December or January to May when the session ends, and pay depends on the job and your experience. Benefits such as healthcare are available.