A recent, eagerly awaited independent financial review of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) has been in the news lately. The review, conducted by the California-based accounting firm CliftonLarsenAllen (“CLA”), made several observations and recommendations, including the flagging of 32 transactions, representing $7.8 million, as potentially fraudulent, wasteful, or abusive.
Indeed, of the 185 transactions the firm reviewed, it had audit observations, meaning that “the results of testing revealed occurrences of noncompliance with statutory requirements and/or internal policies” or “that revealed indicators or red flags of waste, fraud, or abuse,” in 85% of them. The transactions reviewed were not random but were those that the firm suspected would have a greater chance of irregularities.
OHA’s chair of the Board of Trustees and chair of its Resource Management Committee issued a statement pointing out that the report “did not identify actual instances of fraud, waste or abuse.”
Sure. That wasn’t CLA’s job. They’re auditors, not prosecutors, judges, or juries. What they did observe in many instances, however, was very troubling.
Page 94 of the report, for example, mentioned a contract with Absolute Plus Advisors under which OHA paid $181,499. It was supposed to be a contract for the vendor to provide the Trustees with quarterly reports on OHA’s Trust Fund and on its Trust Funds Advisor, sort of like having the vendor keep an eye on the firm who was keeping an eye on OHA’s money. OHA had the contract but had no documentation either of competitive bidding for the contract as required by law, or of any deliverables under the contract. So, the money was spent, but it wasn’t clear if OHA got anything it paid for.
Page 117 of the report described a contract with Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning to provide consulting services. The contract was signed for an amount just short of $100,000 but was amended to increase the contract price to $349,527. Procurement documents such as bid evaluations were nowhere to be found; nor could OHA staff find any of the deliverables related to this contract. So, about $350,000 went out the door and OHA might not have gotten anything in return.
Trustee Keli’I Akina (who, by the way, should be commended rather than pilloried for his role in getting this financial review done) put together and published a digest of the CLA report called “Red Flags: An Analysis of the Independent Audit of OHA and its [Limited Liability Companies].” The digest includes descriptions of these financial anomalies and many others.
Yes, the reports describe the smoke, but not the fire. They don’t accuse anyone of committing fraud or other wrongdoing. There may be instances of ineptitude or mismanagement, which would be deplorable but not criminal, or grand theft, which would carry more severe consequences.
So, we need to seriously consider going to the next step.
OHA would be prudent to consider taking this report to the law enforcement authorities who would be able to investigate whether any of the conduct described in the report rises to the level of criminal conduct, such as fraud, theft, or bribery. OHA, you may remember, is a state agency and is funded with taxpayer money from all of us. All of us get to vote in (or vote out) OHA trustees. Thus, crimes against OHA are crimes not just against the Native Hawaiian beneficiaries but are crimes against all of us. If it is determined that crimes were committed, the perpetrators need to be brought to justice.
The Pig-Ignorance of Tim Kaine & The Pro-Iran Left
“Soleimani was a despicable killer, but this drastic escalation of hostilities, waging a military attack on Iraqi soil over the objections of that country and without congressional authorization, will increase the threat to American troops, diplomats, and families in the region,” US Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), said in a tweet.
This is the kind of opportunistic pig ignorance that passes for statesmanship today in the Progressive wing of the Democrat Party; opportunistic because his statement is politically motivated, ignorant because it dismisses the reality on the ground in the Iranian-influenced Middle East.
Kaine, the failed vice-presidential candidate on Hillary Clinton’s ticket, has a history of making politically opportunistic statements for their shock and pander value including insisting that President Trump wanted every nation to have nuclear weapons. He is on record as saying, “We trust Hillary Clinton, my wife and I, and we trust her with the most important thing in our life.” That says quite a bit when you take into consideration Clinton’s trustworthiness.
So, when we look at Kaine’s catalyst (or any of the usual suspect Democrat obstructionists) for introducing legislation that would require the military’s Commander in Chief to get authorization from Congress for any military measure taken against Iran’s terrorist regime it must be seen as a move that targets the President politically, not ethically or procedurally, and puts the immediate well-being of our military personnel in-theater in jeopardy without support.
Soleimani’s existence was the existence of a physical threat to not only US military and civilian personnel in the Middle East, but Americans and Westerners everywhere. His chief terror organization – Hezbollah – was not pigeonholed to formal nation-state acts of war; it operates in the deathly shadows where terrorists lurk. They operate across the Middle East in cities as well as battlefields. They operate in Europe. They operate in Asia, South America, Central America, and right here in the United States.
This understood, how incredibly ignorant is Kaine’s statement that actions like taking out Soleimani will “increase the threat to American troops, diplomats, and families,” that threat is a constant. The elimination of Soleimani represents the removal of what the sycophantic Left in the US is calling the “mastermind” of Iranian military and terrorist operations. That makes American troops, diplomats, and families safer, not placed in more danger.
As for Iraqi “sovereignty.” There is none. The fact that anyone in Baghdad is mourning Soleimani’s death means that the Iraqi people have been subjugated to their historical enemy, Iran. The US presence in Iraq is meant to safeguard a government for the Iraqi people, not for the political elites who see opportunity in aligning with the terrorist regime in Tehran.
Therefore, there was no “attack on Iraqi soil,” but there was an attack that killed a bloodthirsty international terrorist in Iranian occupied Iraq.
It would serve the political opportunists of the Progressive Left well to stop playing games with the Iran issue. If the US is made to play the Left’s political game of “stall, politicize, and slow-walk” when military action is needed – and especially with Iran being nuclear-capable (and we all know they are) – should a massive loss of life occurs at Iran’s hand because we couldn’t respond in a timely and effective manner…well, let’s just say that Democrats will be cast into a hundred years of political darkness for the blood on their banner, if, in fact, the party survives at all.
Best for the political Left, as they did in the aftermath of 9/11, to shut up, sit down, and not draw attention to their terrorist sympathies.