Office of U.S. Trustee vs. Harmon

Office of The United States Trustee vs. Harmon

(Formerly Woo vs. Harmon)

CV05-00030 DAE KSC

U.S. District Court For the District of Hawaii

Judges: David A. Ezra; Kevin S. Chang

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DEFENDANT’S WITNESS

ROD HARAGA

Former Hawaii Director of Transportation.

2/9/2007

DOT “director” performed mostly
PR functions for his final 18 months?

— Doug @ 7:37 pm

Tha Maui News broke the story a few days ago, but the SB has a story today about the secret “figurehead” role played by Rod Haraga during his last year and a half as Director of the Hawaii Department of Transportation.

Lingle would not say specifically why the veteran highway and transportation engineer’s authority had been so severely restricted. Haraga did not return repeated telephone calls from the Star-Bulletin.

“We wanted results at a higher level in some of the divisions in the department, and so the chief of staff would have weekly briefings with the deputies,” Lingle said when asked why Haraga’s power was restricted. She termed it “a management issue on my part.”

[Lingle’s Chief of Staff Bob] Awana said he decided to have weekly meetings with Haraga and the four deputies in the department.

“He (Haraga) still had the authority to do a number of things, but where items would bottleneck, I would remove the bottleneck,” Awana said. “I would step in and make the final decision if he was having a problem making the final decision or if there was clearly a dispute between the deputy and the director.”

Awana termed the problems within the Transportation Department as “an inability to get off first base.”

Asked why Haraga had not been fired earlier, Awana said Haraga was “guru when it came to highways. … He had a lot of good assets, and we felt that over time these matters would resolve themselves.” But “they did not resolve themselves.”

If these stories are accurate, then hosting a radio show and being the kindly, well-spoken “face” of the department before the legislature and the media are apparently the only real responsibilities Haraga held since August 2005. Still, thinking back to when Lingle was caught in her lie that Haraga did not want to be reappointed to her cabinet, Haraga somehow claimed that he was “surprised” that he was being fired. Haraga had been iced out for more than a year and he thought the Governor wanted to keep him around?! Go figure.

So long as Haraga was allowed to uphold the narrowest interpretation of his legal obligations as DOT Director (and it seems so far that he was), then if the Governor chose to micromanage him to this extent it would seem to be her right as Haraga’s boss. However, the Maui News article speaks of how Awana may have blurred that boundary in actions taken with respect to the DOT decision over which terminal go! airline would be assigned.

How much did it cost to pay Haraga for 18 months of essentially marking time? It’s as if the Lingle administration could not bear to fire a Director during the run-up to her re-election campaign. The public had no reason to suspect that Haraga was not actively running the department, and much of the public liked Haraga’s high-profile approach. It would be a good exercise for someone to go back and review all of the DOT policies and comments (e.g. Kahului Harbor cargo operations, Hawaii Superferry, etc.) since August 2005, to see what other Haraga-era actions might be more properly attributed directly to Lingle and Awana, the “shadow” director.

http://poinography.com/index.php?p=3976

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Rod Haraga is expected to testify regarding his business, professional, personal and political relationships with Larry Mehau, Hawaiian Protective Association, Ltd., Akal Security, Norman Mineta, James Nicholson, Ben Cayetano, John Waihee, George Ariyoshi, Dan Inouye, Daniel Akaka, The Carlyle Group, United Defense Industries, Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate, Robert Herkes, Yukio Takemoto, Matsuo Takabuki, Henry Peters, Richard Wong, Nathan Aipa, KAI Hawaii, Belt Collins Hawaii, Earl Anzai, Lyn Anzai, Joshua Gotbaum, Hawaiian Airlines, Aloha Airlines, Guido Giacometti, Guy Lam, Colbert Matsumoto, Faye Kurren, Tesoro Hawaii, Chevron-Texaco, John Garibaldi, Hawaii Superferry, Maui Planning Commission, Linda Lingle, J.P. Schmidt, Paul Alston, Judith Neustadter Fuqua, Mary Lou Woo, David Farmer, Kazu Hayashida, Barry Fukunaga, and other entities to be determined upon discovery.