Probe whittles suspects
down to 7

Up to 40 workers at the Board
of Water Supply were suspected
of rigging their meters

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By Gordon Y.K. Pang
gpang@starbulletin.com

The list of Honolulu Board of Water Supply employees suspected of rigging their home water meters has been whittled to about seven, according to police detectives.

Police Lt. Owen Harada of the White Collar Crime Unit also told the Star-Bulletin last week that he does not believe there was any organized effort to cheat the agency.

City Water Manager Cliff Jamile submitted to police in October the names of about 40 employees suspected of adjusting their residential water meters to get cheaper water bills.

Harada said that of the remaining seven cases, he did not know how many, or even if any, would be forwarded to prosecutors.

He said the investigation will continue for another month or two.

"It's between one and seven. We're not sure of the numbers yet; we're still looking," he said. "We may end up with nobody."

The other 33 or so employees have been eliminated "because of lack of evidence," Harada said.

Jamile said an ad hoc committee headed by customer-care unit leader Keith Shida is aiding Harada's research and is, at the same time, conducting its own investigation.

That committee is expected to complete its work in the next several weeks, likely in time to give a report to the water board at its April meeting.

The report may include recommendations for disciplinary action, Jamile said.

Like Harada, Jamile said, "I feel certain there is no conspiracy out there."

Further, he said, he is confident that the attention brought to the case, plus continued monitoring of employees and all other customers, will cut down on the amount of abuse in the future.

"I don't think we're going to see that broad an abuse as we thought we saw initially," Jamile said. "I think people recognize that this is a very serious offense."

Shida said he hopes to meet Jamile's late April deadline. "We're about at the same place as police; we're running off the same records," he said.

"The indications right now are that (the abuse) is substantially less than we first thought," Shida said.

Whether any employees will be disciplined remains to be seen, he said.

"We have to run our investigations and be certain about our conclusions."

On Oct. 12, Jamile mailed a letter to the board's employees notifying them that "some our employees may be tampering with their personal residential water meters to alter readings and reduce their bills."

But it was not until after a Star-Bulletin story about the letter ran several weeks later that police were brought in to investigate.

Questionable readings were first discovered in early fall during a test of the agency's new automatic meter-reading program.

A random test revealed some board employees with water bills showing "questionable or erratic consumption patterns." That led to a broader test of all employees.