Lawmakers' inquiry is of dubious value

THE ISSUE A legislative committee intends to continue its probe of the Bureau of Conveyances despite its investigator's resignation.

IF further cause is needed to abort an already problematic legislative inquiry into the state Bureau of Conveyances, the resignation of the man lawmakers hired to investigate the agency should be sufficient.

That legislators will still use the suspect fruits of his probe contributes even more to the dubious value of the House-Senate committee's attempt to examine allegations of misdeeds at the bureau.

The committee should suspend its operations. The state Attorney General's Office is already conducting an investigation and the Ethics Commission will soon begin a new probe, having dismissed the investigator's previous review as biased. Lawmakers don't need to stick their fingers into the pie.

The committee hired Hilton Lui to look into problems at the bureau, as he had done for the Ethics Commission. But commission executive director Dan Mollway deemed Lui's work as untrustworthy because he had publicly opposed the reappointment of Peter Young, the director of the department that supervises the bureau, who had asked the attorney general to begin the investigation.

Mollway did not want to turn over Lui's questionable report, which the committee subpoenaed, but relented. Lui subsequently resigned, saying he did not want the allegations about him to "taint" the committee's work.

However, the committee's co-chairwoman, Sen. Jill Tokuda, intends to use the information Lui gathered and interviews he conducted anyway, which hardly removes the "taint" of bias.

The better course would be for lawmakers to await the attorney general's and commission's conclusions, then take remedial action as warranted.