State's first auditor was no ordinary government employee

THE obituary simply read, "Clinton T. Tanimura, 77, of Honolulu, a retired state government employee, died."

But this was no ordinary state government employee.

This was Hawaii's first state auditor, also called legislative auditor, who made real the intent of the 1950 state Constitution -- that there be an auditor to assist the legislative branch in holding the other two branches accountable for their spending and their performance.

This was Hawaii's first auditor, who, in his 23 years in office, set high standards for professional work and personal conduct that those of us who have worked here have strived to meet.

And yet, near the end of his life, Clint (that's how he signed his memos) planned for his services humbly, privately and meticulously, as always. According to his family, he wrote his own obituary -- that spare newspaper announcement that took us aback in its modesty.

So it's left to the rest of us to tell a few "Clint stories."

Clint interviewed me himself, in December 1970. I was terrified, sitting opposite him at a huge desk in the state Capitol, especially when he said nothing after we both said "Good morning." I decided, however, that it was his turf and the correct thing to do was to let him speak first. When he finally did, he asked, "Why do you want to work for us?" I learned after I was hired that he was a private person, almost shy, and left to his managers the day-to-day contact with assistant analysts like me.

But I also learned that he was tough on work quality. There were stories of unsatisfactory report drafts being tossed into trash cans -- in the presence of their authors. For years, he resisted signing on to the audit standards promulgated by the federal General Accounting Office (now called the Government Accountability Office), maintaining that our work standards were higher than the GAO's.

Under Clint, Hawaii was one of the first states to embark on performance or program auditing. He was a charter member of a legislative fiscal officers' association that continues to meet to this day. He was recognized in books authored by early leaders in what was then a new kind of audit endeavor. He, along with his late deputy auditor, Yukio Naito, was instrumental in professionalizing performance auditing with conceptual frameworks that they skillfully imported from other disciplines.

Clint stood up to auditees and others who objected to our findings and conclusions. In a 1969 newspaper interview, four years after the office's establishment, he admitted to long hours and hard work simply to justify the existence of his constitutional position. Once over that hurdle, he expanded staff and audit topics. Our office newspaper file is rife with clippings not much different from current ones -- and even their subjects are often repeats: loan funds, tourism marketing, personnel management, to name a few. But here and there, the news clips also report on improvements in government as a result of the audits, or at least the adoption of audit recommendations.

In writing his own obituary, Clint instructed his family to hold a very small funeral, but allowed his Buddhist 49th day service to be a celebration of his life attended by friends and acquaintances. That would be a happier time, he said, for he would be joining his beloved Millie at the next stage of existence. (The "49th day" custom is based on the idea that a person enters his next rebirth after "seven times seven days.")

Clint's was a life of pioneering public service carried on his stocky frame. But to the end, he remained modest. He even chose a 10 a.m. time for the Jodo Mission service so fewer people would feel obligated to attend. On Dec. 13, we in government auditing can say to Clint, "okage sama de," which in his case roughly translates to "we stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before." What other words would do for a man who was no ordinary state employee?

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