Senator questions About a year ago, questions posed by Sen. Donna Mercado Kim at public hearings prompted a local company to quit its job as sports-event manager and marketer for the state tourism promotion agency.
HTA hiring
The tourism authority
replaced a contractor with
an ex-worker at the firmBy Tim Ruel
truel@starbulletin.com
A year later, Kim is questioning the way the agency, the Hawaii Tourism Authority, hired a successor to continue the work of the former contractor, Team Unlimited.
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Team Unlimited, headed by Tom Kiely, had worked for the authority since 1999, but the firm told the agency in late 2001 that it planned to quit by March 2002. Months later, in May 2002, the authority hired a former employee of Team Unlimited, Tau Harrington, as a consultant to continue some work initiated by Team Unlimited.
Kiely said Team Unlimited stopped working for the state partly because the company continually faced legislative hearings, mainly in front of Kim, who says her job is to find out how public money is spent on tourism promotion.
To Kiely, the questions amounted to micromanagement. "What I heard in those hearings were things so far down in the day-to-day operation that I kind of wondered why we were there," Kiely said.
Team Unlimited was initially paid $475,000 a year by the authority, and the amount later rose to more than $750,000 a year. The firm managed HTA-funded events, including the PGA and Ironman Triathlon.
Kim, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Tourism, said she was upset the authority hadn't acted more quickly to find replacements for Team Unlimited, since the company had given advance notice. The agency instead acted at the last minute, and didn't issue a competitive request for proposals, Kim said. She asked for justification of Harrington's consulting fees.
Between April 2002 and September 2002, Tau's consulting firm was paid about $40,000, and he is scheduled to continue work through March of this year.
Rex Johnson, executive director of the authority, said Harrington has lived up to the terms of his contract. Harrington agreed. Still, in hindsight, Johnson said it would have made more sense for the authority to hire its own employee to do the work.
All the fuss is not without context. The authority signed Harrington's contract shortly after the agency was hit by a state audit that said there was little accountability in contracting. The authority is now seeking approval for a $61 million budget to market Hawaii in the fiscal year that begins in July.
Harrington joined Team Unlimited in 2001 after a temporary job at Liberty House, Kiely said. Before that, Harrington said, he had sports marketing experience from his own retail business on the mainland. He declined to provide further detail. At Team Unlimited, Harrington worked for Rick Chastain, who oversaw the company's work for the state.
The disclosures came to light yesterday during a hearing in which Kim questioned tourism authority officials about their budget. Harrington was not present at yesterday's hearing, and said he was not asked to attend.
Hawaii Tourism Authority
Team Unlimited
