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Hiring of process server
was no breach of ethics

In an April 19 editorial, the Star-Bulletin suggested that in my capacity as prosecuting attorney for the City and County of Honolulu I stepped over the line and committed an ethical breach in awarding Nakamura and Associates a personal service contract for process serving for this office. Nothing could be further from the truth. The editorial suggests that to avoid ethical breaches, people who have worked on a political campaign should be automatically excluded from certain forms of government work.

Nakamura and Associates received contracts for process serving with this office over a four-year period. Nakamura and Associates was a corporation that had two 50 percent shareholders, former Honolulu Police Chief Michael Nakamura and Kenneth Lee, a professional process server. The most the company received in a year was $24,500 and the least it received was $13,000. Our records indicate the total sum it received over the four-year period was $81,880. The major company expense was an office that doubled as Lee's residential quarters. The office/residence cost $1,500 a month plus $250 for a parking stall, or approximately $21,000 a year. Nakamura doesn't drive and owns his own house, so the major company expenses benefited his business associate, Kenneth Lee.

Lee was a process server under contract with the Prosecutor's Office under the Kaneshiro administration, under the contract with Nakamura and Associates, and continues to serve process for the Prosecutor's Office under my administration with a contract in his own name. Nakamura did mostly promotional work and public relations for the company as well as supervising Lee. Lee did 100 percent of the actual process serving. Lee was serving process for the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney long before I ever became prosecutor and long before the former chief agreed to help on my campaigns.

The editorial reported, "City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle awarded more than $100,000 in contracts to a company owned by his political campaign chairman." This suggests political cronyism in awarding a lucrative government contract. I understand that the Star-Bulletin is now willing to retract the dramatic "more than $100,000" figure for the more accurate figure of $81,880. (See clarification)

There was nothing lucrative about this contract for Michael Nakamura. After company expenses, Nakamura personally received less than $3,000 over the four-year period. The balance was paid to Lee. The work was completed efficiently, cost-effectively and professionally, as expected. Lee has never worked on any of my campaigns in any capacity.

It is absolutely true that Nakamura is my friend, my campaign chairman in 2000 and 2004, and the former chief of the Honolulu Police Department. His company was selected because he was once the head of the largest law enforcement agency in Hawaii and is exquisitely qualified to work with the Prosecutor's Office. His name, reputation, work ethic and experience brought credit to my campaigns and would do the same in any association with the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney.

Your editorial repeated what I told your reporter: "You can't hire someone for working on your campaign. That's just dead, damn wrong. But you can give them a job if they are qualified for it and are capable of doing it well." Your editorial then commented, "That has been the rationale of numerous company officials who donated large amounts of money to former Mayor Jeremy Harris and then received contracts from the city."

There is a glaring difference between the hiring of Nakamura's company and what was done in the campaign spending cases surrounding the Harris campaign. Working on a campaign or serving as a campaign chairman is perfectly legal. I believe such political associations and expressions are constitutionally protected and encouraged in our democracy. In the campaign spending cases, company officials engaged in money laundering, giving contributions under false names and exceeding campaign spending limits by bundling contributions. These activities are criminal acts that subvert our democratic process. The analogy in your editorial is blind to this obvious and essential fact. In a courtroom, such a flawed analogy would be torn to pieces.

Your editorial points out that it is proper for mayors and governors to select people who worked in their campaigns for government jobs. It is not allowed in awarding city or state contracts. The editorial concludes that "Carlisle would have been within ethical guidelines to put Nakamura on his office's payroll, but not to award a contract to his company."

Serving process in criminal cases is a government job. It is done by police, sheriffs and investigators, or more economically, by contracted process servers. When a process server serves documents, he does so at a set fee that does not include providing office space or fringe benefits. A process server can go to a house to serve a subpoena 10 times and if the person is not there, the process server receives no compensation. When a salaried employee goes to a house 10 times he is paid irrespective of a successful outcome and may seek overtime. The use of highly trained and experienced police officers, sheriffs or investigators should be limited to process-serving assignments that are difficult, complicated or dangerous, and require their expertise.

The contract for process servers was a nonbid contract because it was less than $25,000 a year. In the contracts for process servers the price is always the same for whoever receives the contract, $20 per document served and mileage. There is no reason to shop around through the bid process for a lower price because the price will always be exactly the same no matter who receives the contract.

Under the editorial's ethical construct it would be fine and dandy and perfectly ethical if I decided to hire Nakamura as an executive assistant in charge of investigations at $70,000 a year, give him the current fringe benefit rate of 61.37 percent of that salary and put him in a properly supplied office in a government building. The salary and fringe benefit package for four years would have put more than $450,000 of direct benefits into the pocket of my campaign manager. On the other hand, the editorial concludes that when I decided to give his company a contract that put less than $3,000 in the pocket of the former police chief, I crossed the line of ethical propriety.

The ethical rule should be that working on a political campaign does not automatically qualify one for a government job or contract, nor does it automatically disqualify such a person. The unusual ethical world suggested by your editorial would be fiscally irresponsible, hinder political association and expression, and fails the common sense test.

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