In March, Environment Hawai`i reported on the efforts of the `aha kiole advisory committee to award a contract to Leimana DaMate, whose involvement with the puwalu series of workshops sponsored by the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council has generated some controversy.
At that time, we noted that Gov. Linda Lingle had not released any funds for the committee and the state Procurement Office had sent back the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ request to award a non-bid $220,000 contract to DaMate to manage the affairs of the advisory committee, from the date of the exemption request (January 11, 2008) through June 30, 2009. The amount represented the total sum approved by the Legislature for the two-year life of the committee. According to DLNR staff, the contract was intended to cover all of the committee’s expenses, including compensation for DaMate, a former council contractor who has assumed the role of community coordinator for the committee. The request was bumped back, without approval, to the DLNR because its Division of Aquatic Resources failed to comply with a request by the chief procurement officer for documentation that DaMate was the sole source provider of the needed services. (In a follow-up letter to the procurement office, DLNR director and Board of Land and Natural Resources chair Laura Thielen stated, “The Department considers this an unnecessary duplication because the Chairperson already approved the exemption request.”)
On April 14, the DLNR again submitted a form requesting approval of a non-bid contract to DaMate. This time, the amount sought was just $15,000, representing an estimate of expenses already incurred as well as compensation for DaMate’s services so far – even though the scope of services was identical to that included in the first request for exemption. And the date of service, too, was far more limited: from April 15, 2008 to “April 2008.”
This time, the non-bid contract request was sent back to the DLNR on April 22 with a clear disapproval from the chief procurement officer. “These services are administrative in nature,” the explanation states, “and there is insufficient justification on why others should not be afforded the opportunity to provide these services to the committee.”
With regard to the committee’s travel expenses, Director of Finance Georgina Kawamura informed the DLNR in March that it should use existing resources to cover them. And in a February 19 letter to committee chair Vanda Hanakahi, Thielen promised that her department would help reimburse expenses documented as of that date, but urged Hanakahi to stop spending money since the legislative appropriation had not been (and has still not been) released by the governor.
Although it is unclear how – if at all – DaMate’s services can be paid for without a contract with the state, an April email from Thielen to her staff indicates that the committee’s reimbursement will come from the budget of the DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources and not from any legislative appropriation.
While the committee has prepared its 2008 interim report to the Legislature and held a number of meetings at the personal expense of committee members, as of mid-May there was no breakdown in DLNR files of the total amount spent. The DAR’s Francis Oishi says, “They submitted what they thought to be acceptable receipts. We have state standards that we need to apply. We returned the receipts and asked them to essentially recompile.”
Despite Thielen’s request that the committee stop spending money, Hanakahi wrote Oishi on April 29 seeking about $2,850 for airfare and lodging for seven committee members and DaMate, and for wheelchair rental for two committee members. “[A]ll personal resources of the Kiole have been exhausted,” Hanakahi wrote, adding that the committee had scheduled a meeting in Honolulu in late May to plan its activities for the coming year and to discuss the committee’s funding with Lingle.
Oishi says that a decision on Hanakahi’s request is pending. “They want to meet with the governor. We’re not going to even consider paying [until that meeting is confirmed],” he says.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 18, Number 12 June 2008
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