LInk to Civil Beat.  LINK TO OUR PETITION:

CB: "Ethical dilemma: Lauren Akitake has only been the executive director and legal counsel of the Maui County Board of Ethics since July, but she’s already the target of an ethics complaint against her office and a petition seeking to remove her and board leaders.

The Change.org petition, posted Dec. 6, comes from Sam Small, an Upcountry resident and director of Maui Causes, a self-styled government watchdog. The complaint, filed Dec. 11, comes from Christopher Salem, a Lahaina resident, a staffer with former Maui Mayor Mike Victorino and a self-described government accountability advocate.

Both matters are centered on a 2024 charter amendment approved by Maui County voters that called for independent staffing of the Maui Board of Ethics. It allows for the nine-member board to hire its own full-time staff, including an executive director, a secretary and an investigator to facilitate ethics training of county employees and investigations of ethics violations.

In the view of Small and Salem, the charter amendment intended to give the ethics board its own independent legal counsel so that it would not be subject to the influence of the Maui County Department of the Corporation Counsel.

Corp Counsel is the county’s chief legal advisor for the mayor, the County Council, all departments, boards, commissions, officers “and employees in matters relating to their official duties,” according to the department’s website.

“I want them out of the room,” Small told The Blog on Tuesday, alleging that Corp Counsel has a long history of conflicts of interest and meddling in Maui politics. His petition had 163 signatures as of last week.

Similarly, Salem claims the purpose of the charter amendment was to restore trust in the Maui board of ethics and thus ensure impartial ethics oversight. Salem and Small both refer to Corp Counsel as “the 800-pound gorilla in the room.”

“The people of Maui voted for an independent Board of Ethics, not a continuation of the same misdealings that shield conflicts, silence whistleblowers, and protect political allies,” Salem said in a press release about his complaint last month.

Salem told The Blog on Tuesday that he had not received a formal response from Maui County to his complaint, which is not his first before the ethics board.

“So who reviews whether my complaint has merit against the director?” Salem said, suggesting it would be a conflict of interest for the ethics board to do that.

Asked for a response to the petition and the complaint, county spokesperson Laksmi Abraham said in a Dec. 24 email to The Blog that “Lauren Akitake is unable to comment on complaints before the Board of Ethics.”

The reasons, Akitake said, are to “keep details of ongoing investigations confidential.”

In October Civil Beat reported that the ethics board was backing away from a new rule that would have essentially blocked anyone who filed an ethics complaint against a county employee or elected official from talking about it.

Maui Now reported last month that the board is fielding “a significantly higher volume of inquiries than in previous years, prompting the executive director to call for expanded staffing” in the upcoming fiscal budget.

Michael Lilly, the board’s vice chair, is a big fan of Akitake. In a Dec. 9 press release, he said that “under the capable leadership of our Executive Director and Legal Counsel Lauren Akitake and her staff, we’re poised to fulfill all of our noblest dreams about the effectiveness of this Board of Ethics.

SAM SMALL: Two additional examples that help illustrate the Ethics Board's independence concern involve the County Auditor, who hasn't performed the required 3-year peer review since 2018, and Councilmember Tom Cook taking payments for a no-show job with a local contractor.

In these matters, Corporation Counsel has continued to advise the Ethics Board despite having direct involvement in the underlying issues, raising questions about whether truly independent guidance is being provided.
Situations like this are why many voters understood the 2024 Charter amendment as a structural safeguard — to ensure the Ethics Board receives legal advice free from even the appearance of divided loyalties.

This will be a political fight to the end because there are multiple instances of fraud by County Lawyers and corrupt Directors that will survive any statute of limitations and there are some folks who could well end up in jail for what they have done.

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