Virgin Paper Chase: Once again, the Department of Accounting and General Services is seeking an exemption from the requirement that it purchase paper with recycled content for printing state checks. According to the exemption request that state Controller Russell Saito submitted to the state procurement office last month, Xerox, whose equipment the state uses when printing checks, can’t guarantee that a security measure will be effective if the checks are printed on paper containing recycled content.
The security feature is called MICR, for magnetic ink character recognition, or MICR. A letter attached to the exemption request from Ian Yee, Xerox Document Solutions sales manager in Honolulu, says that while his company’s high-speed printers can run on a variety of paper stock, “we highly recommend the use of virgin paper… Our MICR guarantee is based on the printing being within tolerances of the check scanners used by the banking industry to automate processing.” Also, he says, “More jams will occur when using recycled paper.”
A quick internet search easily turned up check suppliers who manage to employ the MICR system on paper with recycled content. But Kurt Muraoka, a DAGS accounting system manager, told Environment Hawai`i, “we don’t want to run the risk” of something going wrong.
“Basically, we try to stay within the standards of Xerox,” he said. “If we have problems, we call them for support. They do maintenance on the systems. We stick to whatever they recommend. They’re not benefiting from this at all, we don’t buy paper from them.”
When banks process checks, he said, their machines read the MICR line on the bottom of each check. With recycled paper, “there’s no guarantee that it will be free of MICR content in that area, which can distort the information picked up by the bank readers.”
“We print over a million checks a year – thousands each day,” he said. “We can’t afford to have any down time.”
According to the exemption request, DAGS estimates that the cost of the paper it needs for checks will be around $35,000 for the 2009-10 fiscal year.
NELHA Pipeline Repair: After three or four do-overs (depending on who’s counting), the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i Authority has finally awarded a contract for repair of the damage to its deep-water pipelines that occurred in the October 2006 earthquake.
The winning bidder is Harbor Offshore, Inc., the same company that got the nod in the second bid, which was voided by NELHA after a competitor’s protest called attention to flaws in the bid process. (The first bidding was cancelled for flaws before a winning bid was selected.) Harbor Offshore was the same company that NELHA administrator Ron Baird wanted to award the job to in his request last September to have the State Procurement Office approve a non-bid “emergency exemption.”
In the NELHA board’s December meeting, Baird did not identify the winning bidder, who had not yet been formally notified. He did say, however, that “we have a very clear and present low bidder, within the amount of monies we have to do the earthquake repairs.” The winning bid came in at $275,256.
Regardless of how “clear and present” the winning bid seemed to Baird, “it’s not over yet,” says Patrick Ross, vice president of Sea Engineering, Inc., which also bid on the project. “I have asked for a debriefing” to learn more about the basis on which Harbor Offshore was awarded the bid. That could lead to a formal challenge, he said.
The subject of NELHA pipeline repairs was discussed in the November issue of Environment Hawai`i, available online at [url=http://www.environment-hawaii.org]www.environment-hawaii.org[/url]
Fishing for Data: In March 2007, when the state adopted new rules regulating the use of lay gill nets, several fishermen and fisherwomen vowed to continue using their nets in their traditional fashion, despite the consequences. The rules require, among other things, lay net fishers to register their nets with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Aquatic Resources and prohibit the use of lay gill nets at night, a condition that some fishers said would turn them into criminals.
Gary Moniz, head of the DLNR’s Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement, says he has no idea how many lay-net related citations his officers have issued since the Board of Land and Natural Resources approved the rules. However, he told Environment Hawai`i, his officers do occasionally confiscate unmarked nets and people receiving citations “usually know that what they were doing is illegal.” He adds that his division is working to implement a software system that will help track DOCARE’s actions.
DAR records indicate that more than two thousand fishers are trying to comply. According to DAR’s Francis Oishi, as of November 19, 78 lay gillnets had been registered in Hilo, 24 in Kona, 71 on Lana`i, 628 on Moloka`i, 591 on Oahu, and 710 on Kaua`i. None have been registered on Maui since the rules ban the use of lay nets there.
Volume 19, Number 7 January 2009
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