Conventional warfare
The state Tourism Authority
is upset at a Pentagon policy
that discourages meetings
in the islands
The U.S. Defense Department has ticked off the state Hawaii Tourism Authority.
The department has said it cannot financially support an American Society of Military Comptrollers meeting scheduled for the Hawaii Convention Center in 2005 because the department only supports national training events that take place within the continental United States.
Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financial officer, said in a May 23 letter to the society that it should have its planned training event in the Washington, D.C., area instead.
"This location would allow maximum participation not only from the leadership and functional experts, but also the many thousand government employees in the area," Zakheim wrote. The department will only support training outside the continental United States when it involves outside personnel, though the policy is not absolute, Zakheim wrote.
He cited "economy and efficiency" considerations.
Those words have pierced the ears of local tourism officials like fingernails on a chalkboard.
"Hawaii has worked very hard to earn its convention business, proving time and again that it can compete effectively with meetings facilities on the mainland," said a May 30 letter by Rex Johnson, president and chief executive of the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Johnson sent the letter to U.S. Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka and Reps. Ed Case and Neil Abercrombie, seeking their help in urging the Defense Department to reconsider its policy.
The tourism authority is concerned that the decision sends an official message that Hawaii is too expensive as a meeting place, an image tourism officials have been battling.
"That is untrue and it is potentially very damaging to the reputation that we have worked so hard to establish," Johnson said in his letter.
Joe Davis, general manager of the Hawaii Convention Center, said military groups are a significant piece of potential business. For example, the convention center has been calling on the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association to come to Hawaii, Davis said.
"There's a larger issue of precedent and we just want to right the ship," Davis said.
Davis said he hasn't given up on having the American Society of Military Comptrollers come to Hawaii in 2005, which would bring an estimated 4,000 attendees to the convention center. The society, which has 18,000 members, is a nonprofit educational and professional organization for military financial managers.
The society picks a different venue annually for its National Professional Development Institute event, which takes place the week of Memorial Day, according to the society's Web site. This year's event was in New Orleans.
Mike Yuen, spokesman for Inouye in Washington, D.C., said Hawaii's senior senator received Johnson's letter yesterday. "This is something we will begin looking into," Yuen said last night.
It seems natural for military organizations to have meetings in a state where the military is such a big part of the economy, Johnson said. Hawaii has 34,608 active-duty military personnel who have another 47,002 dependents, and the military made up 7 percent of the local economy in 2000, according to state data.
A Department of Defense spokesperson had no further information yesterday.