BY MALIA HILL – Have you been to the Hawaii Sunshine website lately? It’s the best resource in Hawaii for anyone who’s on the track of government pork.
In fact, one of the most interesting things about the site is the fact that it allows visitors to “tag” possible examples of government pork by submitting their own Pork Alerts questioning the expenditures they’ve found on the site. A few examples:
From “Joanne” — “Over $35,000 for massages and massage equipments. Hmmm.”
An observation on office spending from AngelGroup: “$166k on Judiciary equipment rental to Xerox? How many Xerox machines do they have? Why don’t they buy some instead? $166k/5k (per machine) would give the Judiciary 33 machines. If they buy more than 33 I’m sure Xerox would give them a screaming deal.”
An examination of DOE spending from Teresa Chao: “DOE Mileage reports: the mileage reimbursements are itemized w/a DOE person’s name & the $$ reimbursed. However for the following categories on this list, the “DOE” is identified as the vendor rather than a person & the amounts of money spent is UNitemized–Comprehensive Student Support Services,$768,893.26; Instructional Support $112,291.55; School Support $94,656.43; School community Svc $9116.93; School Based Budgeting $278,113.16;State Complex Area Admin $159,967.27 :total= $1,423,038.60 that are technically unaccounted for……..”
And a warning about possible back-scratching in the state government from Lisa Gapero: “Kalbert Young was just appointed to Dir. of Finance for Hawaii by Abercommie…watch out just last month Kal wanted to raise property taxes for Maui County, his former employer.”
As you can see, the pork alerts allow for concerned citizens to make a report about a specific expenditure, or just comment on the general spending of a state department, a series of expenditures, or even just express a more general concern or question. There’s even a forum where people can take the discussion to another level. So head on over to the HawaiiSunshine site and join in the pig hunt.