Council committee recommends adding five years to pursue alleged ethics violations

The Maui County Council’s Government Relations, Ethics and Transparency Committee voted 9-0 Tuesday to recommend passage of a bill extending the Board of Ethics’ jurisdiction to pursue ethics violations from one to six years, and to explicitly apply the change retroactively.

The committee, chaired by Council Member Kauanoe Batangan, approved a substitute version of Bill 55-2025 that ties the new six-year window to the date a violation occurred rather than the date an employee leaves County service.

A separate amendment, offered by Council Member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, added language directly into the Maui County Code stating “this section applies retroactively,” after members raised concerns that leaving the point in a committee report alone would not be enough to put people on notice.

“I don’t think that’s sufficient,” Rawlins-Fernandez said. “I know legally we’re being advised that that’s like good enough, but I don’t think that’s good enough, because if people are going to look up the laws, they’re going to look up the laws. They’re not going to go and research committee reports. Not everyone’s a nerd like us.”

Bill 55 was introduced by Council Chair Alice Lee at the request of Mayor Richard Bissen. It now heads to the full Council for first reading.

Closing a jurisdictional gap

Currently, the Board of Ethics loses authority over a case once an employee separates from County service, or after a one-year statute of limitations runs out — whichever comes first.

Board of Ethics Chair Michael Lilly told the committee the board lost jurisdiction over three recent cases, some of them “fairly serious,” because the employees involved had already left County employment.

“We want to have jurisdiction so that we’re able to reach those (who) violated (the code, so) that they can’t avoid accountability by just leaving public service,” Lilly said.

The bill also adds a discovery rule: if a violation is concealed through fraud, the six-year clock does not start until the violation is discovered or reasonably should have been discovered.

Board of Ethics Executive Director and Legal Counsel Lauren Akitake told the committee the change addresses a basic problem — that public trust in ethics enforcement should not depend on the timing of an employee’s departure. A six-year window is standard among comparable jurisdictions, she said.

Testimony calls current rule a loophole

Several community members testified in support of Bill 55 and two related measures on the agenda.

Kathryn “Katy” Shroder, vice chair of the Board of Ethics, said the current one-year limitations period allows employees to escape accountability simply by resigning before a case is resolved.

“It’s like getting a Monopoly get-out-of-jail-free card,” Shroder said, adding that Bill 55 would align Maui’s rules more closely with the State Ethics Commission’s practices.

Lilly, testifying in support of all three bills on the agenda, said ethics rules exist to ensure the government “must not only act fairly, but it must also be perceived by the public that’s acting fairly,” and that public confidence depends on accountability and transparency.

COVID-era spending, fine amounts and oversight gaps

During committee discussion, Council Member Tamara Paltin said she wished the lookback period reached further than six years, pointing to concerns about COVID-19 emergency spending and pandemic-related purchases she said were never adequately explained to the Council.

Batangan said the state auditor is already reviewing emergency procurement conducted during the pandemic. Rawlins-Fernandez later noted that even a finding of fraud tied to that spending could fall outside a six-year window once one is set, though Batangan and Vice Chair Nohelani Uʻu-Hodgins pointed out that fraud-concealed violations restart the clock at the point of discovery.

Paltin said she appreciated the measure as a way of bringing wrongdoing to the surface.

“It’s been very enlightening,” she said. “I will be drafting my letter of grievance to Attorney General Anne Lopez of all the places she should look for our County that I think was kind of shady in our COVID expenditures, and I encourage everyone you know that feels similarly to go down that path because you know the only way you know is if they look into it, and apparently, they’re doing something over there.”

Emergency appropriations for the state’s COVID-19 testing program were at the heart of a bribery indictment issued last week against Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke and four others.

Lee raised a separate concern: that the Council is not fully informed when the Board of Ethics refers matters elsewhere.

“We’re kind of kept out of the loop as a Council, and we have to figure out how to get back into the loop,” Lee said. Akitake said she has begun discussions with the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney and the Maui County auditor about creating a formal referral system between agencies.

Council Member Tom Cook said he supports stronger accountability but wants safeguards against the ethics process being used against public officials for political reasons.

“I’m concerned about people weaponizing these rules and us not having a mechanism to address them,” he said.

Members also questioned why ethics violations under Bill 55 carry a maximum fine of $1,000, while lobbyist violations under a related measure, Bill 100, carry a maximum of $5,000. Akitake said the higher lobbyist fine matches the state’s current penalty for paid lobbyists, a distinct category from County employees and board or commission members.

Two related bills deferred

Bills 99 and 100 — which would establish an anti-nepotism policy and comprehensive lobbyist registration rules, respectively — drew no testifiers Tuesday and were deferred to a future meeting without discussion.

Maui County remains one of only two counties in Hawaiʻi without a countywide anti-nepotism policy and the only one without comprehensive lobbyist regulations, according to findings Akitake attributed to a recent SPIRE audit.

Maui Tomorrow Foundation Executive Director Albert Perez, a registered lobbyist, testified on Bill 100, urging the committee to align County reporting requirements with the state’s system and to reconsider the proposed $5,000 fine, which he said could be steep for nonprofits and unintentional violations.

“If someone breaks the rule, I don’t think they should be fined $5,000,” Perez said. “Maybe they didn’t know, right?”

Batangan said the committee intends to take up Bills 99 and 100 again, along with future legislation on financial disclosures and additional conflict-of-interest rules.

Akitake told committee member that the 2024 charter amendment by Maui County voters was a watershed moment for government accountability.

“That was a significant moment for Maui County as it reflected the community’s desire for greater ethics oversight, increased education and training, meaningful enforcement and an independent office dedicated to helping preserve the public’s trust,” she said. “Last week’s announcement of significant public corruption indictments here in Hawaiʻi serves as another reminder of why strong ethics systems matter.”