HTA chief’s contract
came from AG's office

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By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

When it was formed in 1998, the Hawaii Tourism Authority was more concerned about getting on with its job of turning around Hawaii's No. 1 industry than it was with the details of establishing procedures and controls that later were found necessary, its current chairman, Roy Tokujo, told a hearing in the state Legislature yesterday.

Tokujo said the agreement to hire the authority's first executive director, Bob Fishman, as an independent contractor instead of as an employee came from Gov. Ben Cayetano through the Attorney General's Office, and most members of the board were presented with the contract after it was done.

Tokujo, in a room filled with tourist industry leaders, testified at a hearing on state auditor Marion Higa's recent report criticizing the HTA. He said the $546,000 three-year contract with Fishman Enterprises, which specified that only Fishman was to do the firm's work, was arranged by the governor so as not to adversely affect the state retirement system.

Fishman's history of government jobs, including managing director of the City & County of Honolulu, would have made him "a very high 'high three,' " Tokujo said, referring to the retirement system's basis of paying pensions based on the employee's top three years of salary.

The tourism authority was created in 1998 at a time when tourism was dragging, and did not stop to set up the best possible organizational structure, Tokujo said. Besides, he said, there was no executive director for the first six months and board members, mostly volunteers from the private sector, were putting in long hours defining goals and drawing up broad marketing plans to present to the HTA's marketing contractor, the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau.

Sen. Donna Mercado Kim, chair of the Senate committee on tourism and intergovernmental affairs, pointed out many of the questions and criticisms raised by the auditor had come up before, especially in last year's legislative session, and still had not been answered satisfactorily. Tokujo said the answers are being developed, but three office moves by the HTA and the Sept. 11 crisis made it hard to get the information quickly.

Points about Fishman's contract and performance are somewhat moot; he left four months before the end of his contract because he is a colonel in the National Guard and was called up for military service.

Tokujo has said several times that the HTA board, now searching for Fishman's replacement, will make the next executive director an employee and not a contractor. After the auditor's report, its own evaluation of Fishman and its analysis of its own operations, Tokujo said, the HTA is now well positioned to choose the next chief executive.

Higa testified the audit was conducted because the HTA seemed unable to explain itself on a number of issues during the 2001 legislative session. She called the contractual arrangement with Fishman "highly suspect" and said the authority does not appear to have minutes of executive sessions that discussed contract issues and there were inadequate internal controls over spending.