Honolulu Lite
Back in the old days. I was what morning radio jock Larry Price would call an "een-ves-da-gay-dov re-pota." Fund-raising illegalities
aren’t newEvery year, we "een-ves-da-gay-dov re-potas" trudged down to the Campaign Spending Commission office to go through the books. What we found was that private companies that did a lot of business with city or state government inevitably gave huge donations to political figures. Architectural and engineering firms seemed to be the ones strong-armed most often by politicians to feed the kitty.
We'd report that the amount of money each firm gave was way over the legal limit but that the firms obviously got past that by listing donations in the names of office employees and even family members.
Now, we all knew that this was complete shibai. There's no way that a kid making 10 grand a year as an office gofer is going to pump four grand into a political campaign.
Then we "een-ves-da-gay-dov re-potas" would publish a list of the architectural and engineering firms that were awarded the juiciest government contracts.
And guess what? It turned out that there was absolutely NO correlation between companies that contributed big bucks to political campaigns and companies that won multimillion-dollar contracts!
Just kidding. Of course there was a clear, undeniable and blatant connection between the money-givers and the contract-getters. That's what made that kind of "een-ves-da-gay-dov re-poting" so easy.
We'd report these smoking-gun findings each year, and the public would be outraged, demanding that the public figures and companies involved face criminal investigation.
Just kidding again. Actually, those reports were met with deafening silence. Everyone knew that this was how business was done. As much as the companies hated to ante up, they knew if they didn't fork over the dough, they weren't going to get the contracts.
The watchdog of the process, the Campaign Spending Commission, knew the so-called "bundling" of contributions was going on but rarely did anything to stop it.
Until now. The commission suddenly has noticed that Mayor Jeremy Harris has gotten a lot of these bundled contributions, and has turned the matter over to prosecutors.
The fact that these shenanigans have been going on forever doesn't make it right. But it's interesting that the commission has suddenly awoken just when Harris is running for governor. It doesn't take an "een-ves-da-gay-dov re-pota" to know he obviously has ticked off someone in power.
Bundling could have been stopped ages ago. You simply put contributors like the big-spending office boy under oath before a grand jury and ask if the money donated was his. I doubt he'll choose go to jail for perjury on his salary.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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