WHATEVER happens in the election for Hawaii's governor, Ben Cayetano can rest easy knowing that he has secured a rock-solid place in the state's history by launching the investigation into mismanagement and possible criminal activities within the Bishop Estate. Estate’s
comeuppance
long overdueThe charges by Attorney General Margery Bronster filed last week against the cash-gorged, land-rich, super-politically-fortified estate (which, by the way, also is involved in the education of Hawaiian children) may prove to be the most important prosecution of political corruption and abuse of public trust since statehood.
Yes, the timing of this unprecedented legal assault is fishy, which is to say, highly political. So what? As I said a few columns ago, many amazing and marvelous things seem to happen during campaign season.
It doesn't matter that the lid finally is being yanked off one of the most festering kettles of political fish just in time to help Cayetano's campaign for governor. What matters is that it is being done.
Although we might not have known the exact slimy details of alleged kickbacks, political favoritism and outright thievery by members of the Bishop Estate's board of trustees, we've all known that the estate had been assimilated by a political machine and used to enrich and entertain certain well-connected individuals.
My expose of just a few iotas of mismanagement of Bishop Estate 10 years ago was met with a deafening torrent of indifference. I pointed out way back then that while the trustees apparently were self-dealing and unjustly enriching themselves, the education of Hawaiian children at Kamehameha Schools wasn't so hot.
Although I was just a pushy haole with no business sticking my nose in the activities of that fine estate (as I was informed often, and loudly) I'll tell you, I got one hell of an education.
THE main thing I learned was that there would not, and could not, be any reform because of a peculiar investigatory closed loop involving the estate, courts, governor's office, attorney general and Legislature. It took years to construct this loop, which circled the estate like a massive fortress, intimidating, indestructible and impenetrable.
The first line of oversight should have been the probate court. But the "master" it appointed yearly to review the estate's activities usually was a political hack who issued wishy-washy, attaboy reports and was well-paid for doing it. The Supreme Court wouldn't move against the estate because its members were joined at the hip with the trustees through personal business dealings and political connections. And, not incidentally, they also appointed the trustees to their cushy positions.
The attorney general, "legal parent" of all public trusts, failed to honestly delve into estate matters. As did the governor and legislators, all members of the same club, the Big Ol' Kick Ass Political Power Broker's Club.
In other words, it wasn't that our leaders were asleep at the switch, it was that they had actually deliberately turned off the regulatory switch itself.
Cayetano, for reasons not entirely clear to me, turned it back on. Sure, community leaders also finally stepped forward to criticize the estate. But if the governor had not severed the power loop and launched a serious investigation into estate shenanigans, it would have remained business as usual.
It is ironic that the trustees now say the attorney general, as "parens patrae," or legal parent of the estate, is in a conflict of interest. Until now, the attorney general has been in a glaring conflict of disinterest.
This is not an endorsement of Cayetano. It is just giving credit where credit is due. Unfortunately, sometimes you even have to do that during campaign season.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
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