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Former Mayor Harris
culpable in neglect
of city roads

THE ISSUE An audit shows that Harris' splitting of duties and diverting road crews to other jobs contributed to crumbling pavement.

SUSPICIONS that the Harris administration staged splashy "nice-to-have" projects at the expense of basic city services appear to be confirmed in a city auditor report.

It shows road crews spent thousands of hours -- much of them on overtime -- working on Sunset and Brunch on the Beach activities that contributed in part to the poor condition of Honolulu's roads.

In addition, the city road-maintenance division failed to adopt standard practices for efficiency, had not surveyed road conditions since 2001, neglected preventive maintenance, repaired potholes poorly and without planning and did not keep adequate records.

The audit also hints that pressures from outside of the division might have affected the way the city dealt with road repairs, particularly when the Harris administration decided to end in-house resurfacing projects, instead contracting such major work through private companies, and split responsibility for projects among three departments, creating inefficiency and lessening accountability.

This -- coupled with the fact that files and logs that would have tracked non-road-division work are incomplete and that requests from the former mayor for such duties have disappeared -- raises questions about propriety. The City Council and Mayor Hannemann should demand answers from Harris and his associates about their conduct.

The audit reports that since 2001, the city has not surveyed road conditions, a key component of directing repairs and maintenance.

Where in 1989, 319 lane miles were resurfaced, in the last three fiscal years the number of miles decreased to 61 from 128, countering the argument that privatizing municipal projects brings better results.

The drop in resurfacing meant more and more potholes, which the audit reported increased. Because there were more potholes, rises in claims of damaged vehicles and the amount the city paid for those claims followed, from $9,213 in fiscal 2002-2003 to $53,484 to 2003-2004.

The road division has had significant staff vacancies -- 30 percent, or about 140 openings. The shortage was exacerbated by diverting employees to other tasks. During a three-year period, crews performed at least 5,643 hours of non-road work for beach events.

More troubling, however, is that work reports were incomplete. Of 165 Sunset and Brunch events between 2001 and 2004, the audit found only 30 work logs, meaning that the 5,643 hours represent a small percentage of the total.

Also disturbing is that non-road work orders made by Harris do not show up in records, so the auditor's office was not able to conduct reviews. How this came about should be resolved if not for accounting purposes, then for clearing up questions about administration directives. Though he has left office, Harris needs to provide some answers.

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