State auditor sees State lawmakers say they want to know whether the expert overseeing special-education reforms in Hawaii is profiting from a checklist used to document improvements.
conflict for
Felix exec
Marion Higa says the program's
monitor appears to be
steering business to himselfFrom staff and wire reports
State Auditor Marion Higa told a House-Senate investigative committee yesterday about potential conflicts of interest in the effort to comply with a 1994 federal consent decree requiring improved services for special-needs children.
Among those potential conflicts, she said, is child welfare expert Ivor Groves' apparent dual role as court monitor overseeing the state's compliance with the decree and as a provider of services for the compliance effort.
Higa said Groves is part owner of the Florida-based firm Human Systems & Outcomes Inc., which provides the checklist used to measure whether the requirements of the decree are being met.
A January state audit report said, "The court monitor not only established the benchmarks and developed the instrument to measure achievement of the benchmarks, but he apparently also serves as a consultant to the state to help it achieve compliance -- that is, comply with his own benchmarks as measured by his own instrument."
Higa said such activities were likely forbidden under state law because state employees cannot steer business to their own companies.
"I feel there is a conflict," Higa said after the hearing. "State employees are not allowed to send state business their way. There is a law against profiting from your own position."
The so-called Felix consent decree resulted from a 1993 lawsuit brought by the mother of Jennifer Felix that charged the state was not complying with federal law that mandates health and education services for children with behavioral problems.
The state's annual costs associated with the order have soared from $45 million in 1995 for 4,000 children to more than $350 million for 11,000 children.
Members of the legislative committee said they would have liked to question Groves about the possible conflict but were not able to hear from him yesterday because Chief U.S. District Judge David Ezra on Thursday quashed subpoenas issued by the panel for Groves and his office administrator, Juanita Iwamoto.
Ezra ruled the two are quasi-judicial officials and thus are protected by standard judicial immunity against disclosing processes of the federal court.
Groves was on the mainland and could not be reached for comment.
The committee has also subpoenaed a nationally known mental health professional, Lenore Behar, who is under two federal indictments for allegedly misusing federal money in North Carolina. Higa said there was no accounting of how much money the state paid Behar.
Behar, formerly a top administrator in the North Carolina Health and Human Services Department, was one of three members of a technical assistance group in Hawaii last year. She has denied the federal charges of fraud and embezzlement and said they have nothing to do with her work in Hawaii.
Higa also told the lawmakers that her three audits of the program show that psychologists paid to decide whether a child should be placed in a special-education program then wind up treating that same child.
Star-Bulletin reporter Richard Borreca and the Associated Press contributed to this report.