First city auditor
is ready to startA six-year term begins July 1
for Les Tanaka, a "fiscal conservative"
Les Tanaka loves numbers.
And from the time he was a teenager, he knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up.
"I went to Roosevelt High School, and I think in my junior year, I said, 'I'm going to be an accountant.' Can you believe that?" he said with a soft chuckle and a beaming smile. "Some people think it's crazy."
Crazy or not, Tanaka's gravitation toward tracking numbers and money led him to 32 years in government, doing what he says gives him the most satisfaction: serving the public.
"In college, I joined a service (fraternity) and not a social frat. I still give blood when the blood bank calls me like every couple of months. It's just being able to give a little, contribute back," Tanaka, 57, said. "I always felt with government, the job never ends."
Now the deputy under state Auditor Marion Higa, Tanaka will become the first city auditor established under a Charter amendment approved by voters in November. He assumes his new role as head of the Office of the City Auditor on July 1 for a six-year term.
"I get to look into how people spend, so it's always challenging to see whether people are doing a good job in terms of spending our taxpayers' money," Tanaka said.
A self-described fiscal conservative, Tanaka has been the second-in-command since 1995 in an office that gets both praise and criticism for its audits of state agencies. It is an office he said he is proud to have had a role in shaping.
Now he gets a chance to bring the same model to the city.
"I thought it would be a tremendous challenge to start the new office from ground zero and bring whatever expertise and hopefully quality work that we've been able to do here (at the state) to the city level," Tanaka said. "There's been some concern that the city needs to be more accountable for not only the expenditure of public funds, but how it's managed and how its programs are managed."
Both Tanaka and members of the City Council already have an idea on which areas they would like audited.
Council Chairman Gary Okino said that the Council will have to set priorities, but he personally would like the audits to address the city's fiscal problems to bring about a more stable fiscal condition. Having a more efficient city government is another area, looking at issues such as contracting, cost overruns and change orders.
"I'm hoping he can come up with long-range plans to reduce debt burden and come up with better ways to manage our problems," Okino said.
Both Tanaka and Okino would like to see audits of landfill and sewer operations in light of reported problems in those areas.
Tanaka will apparently get his assignments by Council resolution, and he would have some flexibility to initiate audits on his own. Okino said that the Council is looking at forming an audit committee to help decide what to audit.
A search committee of councilmembers and accounting experts selected Tanaka, whose appointment was approved by the Council last week.
Okino, who was on the search committee, said that Tanaka's experience in performance and financial audits, his knowledge of Hawaii's government system and his calm, low-key demeanor were all pluses.
Higa was attending a mainland conference and could not be reached for comment, but Okino said that she also praised Tanaka. "She spoke very highly of him."
Ironically, the city's financial woes could keep Tanaka's office small for now -- him and two or three staffers. His budget is about a half-million dollars, but that must also pay for the required annual financial audit, which could eat about half of it.
Audits are revealing in different ways, Tanaka said, especially in their ability to communicate "what the problems are within an agency or program that you're looking at -- why did it occur, how did it occur, what needs to be corrected to improve efficiency."
He oversaw last year's audit of the Employees Retirement System, an audit he is especially proud of because of what it pointed out and the changes it brought about.
"I think it brought to issue a lot of things about how the investments were being done, some issues about their investment managers, how they hire their investment managers," he said. "A direct result of that audit resulted in some benefits to the participants of the retirement system."
He said that had a city auditor been in place, that person might have seen signs of irregularities earlier in the Ewa Villages relocation scandal to prevent the theft of millions of dollars.
He said while internal controls uncovered some of the problems, "you hear all these rumors that some of this was going on for years and why wasn't it caught sooner."
The auditor also knows what it is like to be audited. "To be a good auditor, you also need experience on the other side. Basically, you know where to hide everything."
Being on the receiving end of an auditor's request while he was director of administrative services at Kapiolani Community College from 1981 to 1994 taught him how the other side feels.
"It can be intimidating. It can be scary," Tanaka said.
But that experience, along with his nice-guy persona, could also help to get access to agency documents and information without him having to resort to the subpoena powers that the position holds.
One of his heroes is his wife, Karen, a pre-audit clerk at the University of Hawaii, who has stuck by him even though his work consumes him at times, he said. "She's used to me working long hours, but a lot of times, because we live close by, I just bring the work home."
And his motivation is simple.
"At the end of the day, hopefully at the end of my career, just knowing I made a difference, for me, that's all that matters."