Category Archives: education

Both major Honolulu dailies, the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser, published their reports from what the latter describes as “hundreds of pages of documents released yesterday by the University of Hawai’i, including personal e-mails, UH Foundation documents, travel itineraries and draft minutes from two key meetings of the UH Board of Regents.”

The Star-Bulletin focuses on the Regents’ loss of trust and ends with a list of key issues.

Minutes of meetings and documents that led to the firing of University of Hawaii President Evan Dobelle show regents believed Dobelle misused a UH Foundation fund and lost the trust of the board because of his “lies.”

In a discussion in executive session before the vote to fire Dobelle on June 15, regents expressed their reasons why the then-president should be terminated, including allegedly using UH Foundation money for personal benefit, and a lack of leadership, follow-up and credibility.

Regent Walter Nunokawa said the board should have taken action last year, but “the Lingle appointees wanted to have a chance to work with the president and see if they could do better than we did with him.”

Board Vice Chairwoman Kitty Lagareta, who was appointed to the board last year by Gov. Linda Lingle, said she wanted to give Dobelle a chance. But, according to the minutes’ summary of her comments, “the bottom line for her is that the president is a liar — a habitual liar, and unfortunately a very credible liar.” …

According to the minutes, Deloitte & Touche auditor Gary Nishikawa told the regents that there was a “reimbursement frenzy” when the fund was audited. But he said it was not within the auditor’s scope of services to render an opinion or determine whether there was an intent to defraud the university.

Dobelle has said there was sloppy bookkeeping with the fund but no intent to take money….

KEY ISSUES IN THE FIRING OF UH PRESIDENT EVAN DOBELLE

Problem areas related to the Board of Regents’ June 15 firing of University of Hawaii President Evan Dobelle, according to documents released yesterday and cited by UH sources:

>> An audit report that shows $72,000 in undocumented expenses from Dobelle’s protocol fund managed by the UH Foundation.

>> Use of about $7,000 from a restricted donation for a video showing Dobelle receiving a Salesman of the Year award from Sales and Marketing Executives of Hawaii.

>> Use of university funds for flights to the mainland to interview for positions at other institutions.

>> Dobelle, a former mayor of Pittsfield, Mass., flew the sheriff of Pittsfield to Hawaii and put him up in a Waikiki hotel [not just any old Waikiki hotel, but the Halekulani, “the premier luxury hotel”!] at university expense. Dobelle told the regents he was recruiting the sheriff to work on an educational program, but administrators of the program said they never heard of him.

>> Dobelle also used university funds for air fare and hotel expenses for the men’s squash coach at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., where Dobelle formerly was president, saying he was recruiting the coach, even though UH does not have a squash program.

>> Cost overruns for renovation of College Hill, the university president’s residence.

>> A $4,000 trip taken by Dobelle’s wife, Kit, to a conference in Massachusetts at her college alma mater.

Source: Associated Press [probably AP reporter Bruce Dunford; see this blog’s initial post on Dobelle].

The Advertiser leads off with alleged misuse of funds and ends with assessments from each member of the Board of Regents.

During some fund-raising trips on behalf of the University of Hawai’i in the past nine months, Evan Dobelle was job-hunting and undergoing personal job interviews, according to documents released by the university yesterday….

BOARD OF REGENTS ASSESSES DOBELLE

Highlights from the minutes of June 15, when regents fired Dobelle “for cause.” They later rescinded that decision:

Regent Myron A. Yamasato • “Regent Yamasato stated that since Dobelle has no solid support from any stakeholder group … his appointment should be terminated.”

Regent Walter Nunokawa • “Regent Nunokawa noted that after three years there is still no operational plan for the university, just a bunch of big ideas without priority or commitment attached to them. He noted it is particularly troubling, since he is one of the few regents who were on board when Dobelle was hired, to find that many side contracts were negotiated without the knowledge or oversight of the Board. Regent Nunokawa concluded that since there is no trust, and the feeling is unanimous that he has no integrity, there is no reason to continue his appointment.”

Chairwoman Patricia Lee • “In the areas of scholarship and academics, it is questionable whether he is fit to lead a Research 1 (One) University and whether he would have earned tenure on his own given his academic credentials. If the public knew what the board knows and if these things could be brought (to) light, the public would be outraged.”

Regent Charles Kawakami • “He stated that the president simply has no integrity and you cannot trust him so it is really impossible to work with him.”

Regent Kitty Lagareta • “Regent Lagareta also noted that she had been deeply troubled by President Dobelle’s inability to work effectively with women. She said that it was unbelievable when he told some male regents that things would be easier if he didn’t have to work with two women as chair and vice chair.”

Regent James J.C. Haynes II • “He said it is time to move on past Evan Dobelle because he is simply not good for the university.”

Regent Alvin A. Tanaka • “Given all the lies, threats, and problems with money, Regent Tanaka said that personally he would not stay on the board if President Dobelle continued.”

Regent Trent K. Kakuda • “Regent Kakuda said that he simply could not take another year of the president’s lies and deceptions to the board and to the public.”

Regent Byron W. Bender • “President Dobelle has demonstrated no leadership in dealing with problems, choosing rather to allow them to ‘fester’ and eventually land at the board’s doorstep. He has a problem with money and the board cannot allow it to continue.”

Regent Jane B. Tatibouet • “There is too much money being mismanaged and misused for his personal benefit rather than for the entire university.”

A related story is headlined How regents reached decision.

The meeting at which University of Hawai’i regents decided to fire President Evan Dobelle — a decision they later rescinded in a settlement agreement — began with advice from the board’s attorney and discussion of an audit of Dobelle’s spending, draft minutes of the session released yesterday show….

According to the draft minutes, “Lee said that she favors a graceful termination or resignation, but President Dobelle already stated publicly that we ‘can’t fire him’ and that the board will have to ‘buy him out.’

“She added that this may be the president’s final position, but that she has done some analysis and … the university could save about $1,386,000 even if the board did buy him out of his main contract and probably much more once the board does an assessment of all of his side agreements.”

She also said the university could save money with the departures of “his high-priced people, some of whom have already left,” the minutes show.

Finally, the Star-Bulletin includes a sad sidebar story by investigative reporter Rick Daysog headlined, Dobelle siphoned off donation for Jewish studies at UH: The donor asks that the money be restored to its original purpose.

Well, I guess I’ve finally figured out what Evan S. Dobelle’s middle initial stands for.

UPDATE: In the 18 August edition of Honolulu MidWeek, columnist Bob Jones reports on “What the Dobelle Report Left Out.” His sources say that after the Regents decided to fire Dobelle for cause on the advice of their special-hire attorney, Barry Marr, UH attorney [and the Democratic Party’s in-house watchdog] Walter Kirimitsu suggested that [long-time Democratic Party insider] Dobelle might sue the Regents individually, in which case it would be better to try mediation first.

The public also deserves some answers from former regent, chairwoman Lily Yao. The others gave her authority to work out and sign the Dobelle contract.

Why did she give Dobelle everything he wanted, including expedited (immediate) tenure? That’s not uncommon if a university is trying to hire someone who’s a world-class scholar, professor or researcher. Dobelle was a politician with no professorial background and a record of administration only at three very small colleges–never at a Carnegie I research institution such as the UH. Why did Yao toss in a private letter giving Dobelle extra insurance and a year’s paid sabbatical without telling all the other regents?

When the regents went into session on June 15, Evan Dobelle was going to be fired. There was no question of talking to him and trying to work things out. Too many were infuriated by a previous session in which they tell me he leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head and I gave them his you-can’t-fire-me smile as they went on about what they saw as misuse of money, bad evaluations, bad management and missed meetings.

And he almost couldn’t be fired. Not one word in the contract allowed him to be fired for insubordination, failure to carry out the regents’ mandates or poor evaluations. He had been made virtually fire-proof by Lily Yao’s solo signature. The only question on June 15 as the regents talked with Marr over several hours was if they could stretch to a for-cause firing. Just plain firing, they agreed, didn’t cut it–mainly because of that tenure business. Marr said yes.

Good riddance. Dobelle was the last straw. I’ve lost whatever residual faith I once had in Hawai‘i’s Democratic Party.

UPDATE: In the 20 August 2004 edition of Pacific Business News, Howard Dicus explains “How Hawaii Works”:

To a journalist, Dobelle’s failure to deliver was the story. Something that isn’t surprising, isn’t news. “Family of Six Survives as Boiler Fails to Explode!” But the gap between Dobelle’s crackerjack billing and slacker performance? That was surprising. [Well, he did work for the State after all.] How could a former White House protocol officer be so bad at politics? [Well, it was the Carter White House.] How could a veteran of New England winters not learn to love slippas? [Well, he apparently didn’t spend all that much time in the Islands.]

By contrast, if the regents mishandled his firing, where’s the news in that? The regents are a committee. We all know how committees are.

Lewis Thomas once described the collective intellect of ants by saying that one ant is an idiot, two ants are the glimmering of an idea, but an entire anthill is a marvelous brain, “with little bits for its wits.”

Humans work the opposite way. One human can be an Einstein. Two humans thinking together are a compromise. Put five or six perfectly intelligent humans around a table and a camel begins to appear in the paddock. And so on, all the way up to the Board of Regents.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a comprehensive and fairly balanced report by Julianne Basinger on the firing of University of Hawai‘i President Evan S. Dobelle entitled Wipeout in Hawaii: A president is toppled amid claims of arrogance, cronyism, and misspending. If the link should become unavailable, the compilation at The Firing of Evan Dobelle covers much of the story. The following are a few tidbits from the Chronicle story that weren’t covered earlier.

“While it looks like it’s just been a one-year situation of difficulty, it’s been a three-year situation,” says Patricia Y. Lee, a regent who has been on the board for three years and chairwoman for the past year. “At his [Dobelle’s] first-year review, he stalked out of the room and said, ‘You can’t fire me.’ So you can see it’s not a comfortable relationship.” …

Lilikala Kame‘eleihiwa, a professor of Hawaiian studies on the Manoa campus, believes Mr. Dobelle’s endorsement of Ms. Hirono [the Democratic Party’s candidate for state governor in 2002] led regents appointed by [Republican] Governor Lingle to seek his ouster. Mr. Dobelle won the professor’s support after he gave $1.5-million from a discretionary fund for a new Hawaiian-studies center. “Evan Dobelle to me represented our champion,” she says. “I was extremely saddened that he should be fired.” But other faculty members, regents, lawmakers, and even Mr. Dobelle himself say that tensions with the board and questions about his spending existed before his endorsement.

The Chronicle also includes the following timeline entitled Steps Toward an Exit

• JULY 2001 – Evan S. Dobelle becomes president of the University of Hawaii System.
• FEBRUARY 2002 – Mr. Dobelle takes 25 donors and staff members to a Janet Jackson concert, paying for the tickets through a presidential discretionary fund of the University of Hawaii Foundation, the system’s private fund-raising arm. His action prompts public outcry, and by April a state legislator calls for a state audit of whether foundation money is being used appropriately.
• SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 2002 – The president judges the Miss America pageant in September, despite criticism from some faculty members who say doing so is sexist and inappropriate for a college leader. In November Mr. Dobelle endorses the Democratic candidate for governor in a television commercial, and a member of the university’s Board of Regents resigns in protest.
• MARCH 2003 – A state audit of the university’s foundation finds “a number of questionable foundation expenditures made under the guise of fund raising.”
• OCTOBER 2003 – Amid increasing criticism from lawmakers and some faculty and staff members over his spending, particularly on travel, Mr. Dobelle receives a negative performance review from the regents, which he hotly disputes, both for its content and for the board’s procedure in evaluating him. The review accuses him of a lack of accountability to the board, including murky reporting on finances.
• APRIL-MAY 2004 – A second state audit of the foundation again finds “questionable, even abusive, expenditures from donated funds.” The state legislature passes a bill requiring the foundation to disclose more financial records to lawmakers.
• JUNE 2004 – After an evaluation that includes an outside consultant and a financial review of the president’s spending of foundation money, the regents unanimously vote to fire Mr. Dobelle “for cause,” but they decline to disclose what the “cause” is. He threatens to sue, and the two sides and their lawyers begin mediation. The university’s accreditors criticize the board and the university for their poor relationship.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported on 15 July 2004 that Dobelle allocated $90,000 out of his annual protocol fund of $200,000 on a political poll.

Documents in the draft audit of the protocol fund also show that even though the poll was commissioned in November 2002, Opinion Dynamics was not paid its $45,000 fee for the January poll until last October. The protocol fund began to run out of money toward the end of its fiscal year in June 2003, according to the draft audit. However, it was not clear if that was a factor in the late payment.

The contract with Opinion Dynamics was for $90,000 plus expenses for two polls — with a second poll to be conducted in June 2003. In a handwritten note on the contract, Dobelle wrote, “no more than $99,999 for both surveys.”

Under university procurement policies, all consultant contracts in excess of $100,000 require prior Board of Regents approval.

The June 2003 survey was never conducted, Dobelle said.

A special to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on 25 July 2004 by University of Hawai‘i journalism professor Beverly Ann Deepe Keever headlined The Dobelle Debacle notes “The secrecy surrounding Evan Dobelle’s interrupted tenure as UH president has done great harm to Hawaii’s public university.”

The spiral of secrecy that augured the Dobelle debacle began in early 2001 [before the current Republican governor was elected] when the UH Board of Regents met in a series of unannounced, closed-door meetings and agreed to a lucrative contract with Dobelle.

On March 9, 2001, Lily Yao, then-chairwoman of the Board of Regents, signed Dobelle to a contract paying him at least $3 million over seven years and giving him residency in the state-owned mansion near the Manoa campus, use of a state car and a number of other perks.

His first-year salary of $442,000 was more than double that of outgoing President Kenneth Mortimer and four times that of the governor. This multimillion-dollar commitment was agreed to just as the board was raising student tuition and Gov. Ben Cayetano was arguing that the state was too impoverished to increase faculty pay enough to forestall a strike that eventually did occur.

Contesting the secret negotiations that led to such an expenditure of taxpayer monies were graduate student Mamo Kim and the Hawaii chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), who filed a lawsuit in Hawaii’s First Circuit Court. They argued that this secrecy violated Hawaii’s “Sunshine Law” requiring open meetings of public agencies, except in specific cases permitting closure. This “Sunshine Law” was passed by the Legislature in 1975 in the wake of the Watergate scandal so that opening up closed doors of government would allow in sunshine that acts as a disinfectant to reduce mismanagement and even illegal or unethical decisions.

Unfortunately, graduate student Kim and SPJ lost the case. Circuit Court Judge Virginia Crandall OK’d the board’s practice of recessing one closed-door meeting in order to hold another unannounced closed-door meeting without the public and the news media even being aware that the board was meeting or what it was meeting about.

Also unfortunate, the board’s secret decision-making on Dobelle’s high-priced and lengthy contract sent the wrong signal to the incoming president that money was no object at UH. Dobelle assumed the presidency on July 1, 2001, just 72 days before the spectacular attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon sent Hawaii’s struggling tourist-based economy into an even steeper nose dive.

The rest is history — and a lot of news stories. Dobelle brought in his own management team from the East Coast, paying members up to twice the salaries of the veterans they replaced. He recommended — and the board agreed — to pay double his own salary to UH’s head football coach June Jones. And Dobelle racked up a tremendous cost overrun in refurbishing his state-owned residence.

Dobelle’s public aura of extravagance was magnified by his driving around campus in his pricey Porsche, rather than the state car, and buying a million-dollar-plus home while he was living rent-free in the president’s mansion, College Hill. The governor is the only other state official granted the privilege of a state residence — and hers is now considerably less impressive than the university president’s.

UPDATE, 30 July: Dobelle and the Regents reached a settlement while Dobelle was away (yet again) at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

In the settlement announced yesterday, the regents will pay ousted UH President Evan Dobelle and his attorneys $1.6 million, plus payments to an insurance policy. He agreed to give up about $496,000 from a UH Foundation incentive fund. Dobelle’s deal includes:

• $1.05 million payment.
• A nontenured researcher position at UH-Manoa for two years at $125,000 a year plus collective bargaining raises.
• $290,000 for his attorneys.
• $40,000-a-year payments on a $2 million whole life insurance policy for the next six years. UH will be reimbursed for its payments to the insurance company when Dobelle’s heirs cash in the policy.

Nonmonetary highlights of the UH-Evan Dobelle settlement include:

• Regents rescind firing for cause.
• Dobelle resigns on Aug. 14.
• Both sides resolve the dispute without finding wrongdoing by Dobelle or the board and agree not to pursue further legal claims.

The summary dismissal for cause last week of University of Hawai‘i President Evan Dobelle made the news on CNN, MSNBC, and even the Guardian. The best coverage seems to be that of AP correspondent Bruce Dunford, whose 20 June 2004 report in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin seems to me the most comprehensive and fairest summation to date.

From day one, his $442,000 salary and perks have been an issue, including spending $1 million on renovations to his residence, the UH’s College Hill mansion and guest house. It was three times the amount that had been planned.

Dobelle hadn’t been on the job for a year when his spending habits caught the eye of Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Brian Taniguchi (D, Moiliili-Manoa). He called for an audit of University of Hawaii Foundation money being used by Dobelle to take two dozen donors and staff members to a Janet Jackson concert at Aloha Stadium [a concert free of any “wardrobe malfunction”].

Despite such questions, the regents in their first year evaluation of Dobelle praised him for initiating progress and changing attitudes in the university system.

Things ran smoothly until November 2002, when in the closing days of the heated campaign for governor, Dobelle appeared in a television ad to endorse Democrat Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono over Republican Linda Lingle, who ended up winning….

Some see that as the root of the move to get Dobelle fired as Lingle began making appointments to the Board of Regents.

However, it was Democratic lawmakers who began pressing the point on Dobelle’s spending, including personal use of University of Hawaii Foundation funds and his hiring of highly paid assistants [including his old buddy “Wick” Sloane as the university’s CFO and Sloane’s wife as head of the UH Foundation].

On July 6, 2003, House Higher Education Committee Chairman K. Mark Takai (D, Newtown-Pearl City), Sen. Donna Mercado Kim (D, Kalihi Valley-Halawa), retired professor Ralph Moberly and UH official Amy Agbayani, a veteran Democratic Party insider, co-authored an article highly critical of the UH president.

“In Dobelle’s two years, we see an institution where student tuition is being raised while administrative salaries are boosted by more than $4 million, where substance and services take a back seat to marketing and public relations, and where a globe-trotting president fails to bring home the money he promised,” the article said.

Takai said he initiated a search for Dobelle’s spending and travel records after the president and his top aides didn’t show up at a House Higher Education Committee meeting on April 16, 2003, to answer questions about the $200,000 President’s Protocol and Support Fund at the University of Hawaii Foundation, the legally separate nonprofit organization that raises funds for the school. It’s to be spent on things that the president feels will advance the university.

Dobelle had notified the committee he would be at a mainland conference that day, but Takai said his staff checked with conference officials and determined Dobelle did not attend.

The lawmaker, who once headed the UH student body government and Manoa campus student newspaper, said a check of travel documents showed Dobelle was on Oahu that day.

“So in effect, he lied to us,” said Takai, who added that the Dobelle spending and travel records obtained by the committee were turned over to the Board of Regents and likely prompted a private audit ordered by the regents. The report on that audit has yet to be made public….

In February, the board began a new evaluation of Dobelle, headed up by [Kitty] Lagareta, a Lingle confidante and key Lingle campaign official in the 2002 governor’s race.

The tone for the new evaluation no doubt was set in April, when the previously confidential and highly critical report on Dobelle’s 2003 evaluation was made public at the direction of the state Office of Information Practices.

The UH Board of Regents are in a tough spot. When they gave Dobelle a negative evaluation earlier in the year, he threatened to sue if they made it public. Now they’re taking a lot of flack for not spelling out the grounds for Dobelle’s dismissal, even though they risk lawsuits if they breach confidentiality in personnel matters. Both Dobelle and the Regents have hired lawyers.

Here are a few more background items from various sources.

Pacific Business News reported that Dobelle apparently knew something was up, suggesting he perhaps deliberately made himself hard to reach.

Two members of the University of Hawaii Board of Regents say the regents warned Evan Dobelle he should attend their meeting this week, and when he didn’t they tried repeatedly to reach him by phone to tell him what happened….

Board of Regents Chairwoman Patricia Lee replies that the meeting was not kept secret from Dobelle, who asked if he should be there for it and was told he should. She also says the regents made several attempts to reach Dobelle by phone, but never got a callback, and still haven’t.

“Evidently the president chooses not to communicate with the board,” Lee said Friday. “He has communicated with counsel.”

Dobelle was rumored to have been job-hunting ever since he ran afoul of the legislature last year. Perhaps his prominent placement (cover and lead article) in the Winter 2004 issue of The Presidency was part of that effort.

“The American Council on Education’s flagship magazine, The Presidency focuses on college and university presidents and chancellors.”

Dobelle appears to be a master of PC PR, managing in 2002 to wangle a position judging the decidedly un-PC Miss America pageant and helping give it a PC spin (as reported by Jake Tapper of Salon).

“This selection validates an opportunity for young women who never would have considered entering this competition,” says judge Evan S. Dobelle — the president of the University of Hawaii and the White House chief of protocol during the Carter administration — when it’s all done. “By picking a multiracial, Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard Law School woman who’s articulate and personable and was selected, in my opinion, because she was the smartest — that is antithetical to the perception historically of the pageant.”

Early in his tenure, Dobelle managed to “tread on dangerous ground politically when he handed out more than 200 termination notices to deans, directors and top managers” around Christmas 2002. “Even though most of the notices weren’t acted upon, they left bad feelings, sentiment that reverberated all the way to the Legislature.” The recipients never received follow-up letters whether each would be rehired or let go at the end of the year. Instead, clarifications were issued through press releases. UH administrators often had to read the local papers to find out what was happening at the university. In that respect, the manner in which Dobelle was fired gives him a taste of his own medicine.

I don’t know. Dobelle seems to be someone a Texan might describe as “all hat, and somebody else’s cattle” (rather than “all hat, no cattle”). The Regents who appointed him and gave him such a rich, long-term, iron-clad contract have as much to answer for as the ones who fired him.

UPDATE: More background information is coming out about Dobelle’s dismissal. First, concerns about accreditation seem to have been a factor.

The dysfunctional relationship between University of Hawaii President Evan Dobelle and the Board of Regents threatened the accreditation of three UH campuses, according to a strongly worded report that appears to have been a factor in Dobelle’s firing.

A team from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges — the accrediting body for UH-Manoa, UH-Hilo and UH-West Oahu — told the university last month that the “severe difficulties” between the regents and the president do not meet standards of accreditation for leadership of a university.

Dobelle’s response was to send the regents for training. It was all their fault.

He described the board as “inexperienced” and said he set aside $50,000 for regents to get training from the Association of Governing Boards — another recommendation in the report.

“It’s a learning curve that they chose not to take,” Dobelle said. “I wish we could work it out. They chose not to.”

Next, a legislative fiscal hawk expresses concern about Dobelle’s inability to deliver on his fund-raising promises.

Donna Mercado Kim, state Senate vice president, a longtime critic of Dobelle, said she doubts that Dobelle was fired because of his political support for Gov. Linda Lingle’s opponent, former Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono.

“As a Democrat, I’d like nothing better than to point the finger to Lingle and say it was all politics and that she orchestrated it,” Kim (D, Kalihi Valley-Halawa) said in an interview. “I know she is denying her involvement and I tend to believe it. I was talking to one of the regents. They said they wouldn’t fire him unless the evidence was clear.” …

“I spoke to regents who left the board prematurely, and they said they did so because of Evan Dobelle and (they) were ones appointed by Cayetano [the previous governor, a Democrat].

“They said they couldn’t stomach it any longer, so it was only a matter of time.”

Kim recalled that she was impressed with Dobelle when he came to Hawaii in 2001, but after failing to get him to explain what he would do if he were unable to raise the $150 million for the medical school, she became frustrated.

“Time went by and he was making these promises, but he didn’t have anything to show for it,” Kim said.

Long-time UH faculty member Meda Chesney-Lind adds her perspective.

By way of introduction, I’ve been in the UH system since 1969, and in my time I’ve known and worked with five presidents [Harlan Cleveland, Fujio Matsuda, Al Simone, Ken Mortimer, and Dobelle]. Obviously, I worked with some more closely than others, but I was on the Senate Executive Committee of the UHM Faculty Senate when President Dobelle was first on the campus. I recall the excitement and all the hope that we had about his presidency.

I also recall the deep disappointment that began, for me, some months into his tenure. I’ll spare you the details, except to say that after saying he was a “bottom up,” “faculty driven” administrator, we hardly ever saw him again; his talks announcing major new University initiatives were all off campus. Ultimately, he barely avoided being censured by our senate (and that was avoided only because he threatened to make Deane Neubauer resign if we went through with it). After the first year, filled with cronyistic hiring, excessive and expensive foreign and domestic travel, and grand schemes, he sort of disappeared. Candidly, most of us felt that he was phoning in his performance for much of the last year.

Finally, Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Cynthia Oi editorializes under the headline Dobelle’s team of outsiders acted as their own insiders:

No one has dared to say outright that he was seen as an uppity mainland haole [Caucasian] who snubbed local sensitivities, but undertones of the viewpoint were audible beneath careful remarks of politicians, faculty, community leaders and others.

There have been many times, private and public, when localism seeped into conflict and life in these islands. Slippery to define, the characteristic fuses values and attitude, social and economic standing, birthplace and ethnicity. It can be precious asset or parochial contaminant.

But in Dobelle’s case, I don’t think it can be marked as the overpowering toxin that produced this unseemly mess. It isn’t an “only in Hawaii” situation. Disrespect knows no boundaries of ocean or land. It is not one-sided or singular….

Dobelle and his crew were their own dazzling insiders. As intelligent and experienced, as sophisticated and charming, as motivated and passionate about doing good, they seemed deaf and blind to the importance of engaging the community. Not just perfunctorily, not through “howzits” and other words, but through deeds, through showing up.

Dobelle may be unaware that he was cut a lot of slack. He made big shoulders about raising money, but the flash didn’t match the cash. Give him time, was the initial reaction. But extravagances overshadowed fund raising, talk subbed for progress, and evasion and snubs became the norm….

Disrespect yields the same.

25-28 June 2004 UPDATE: Former regents appointed by Democratic Governor Ben Cayetano have begun to speak out.

University of Hawaii regents began having concerns about ousted UH President Evan Dobelle’s leadership style on his first day in office, a former regent said.

Regents also began questioning Dobelle’s travel spending and fund raising months before board members appointed by Gov. Linda Lingle took office last July, documents and interviews show.

When regent Michael Hartley resigned on Nov. 5, 2002, he cited Dobelle’s public endorsement of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mazie Hirono as one of several incidents that led to his decision….

Hartley also criticized what he saw as Dobelle’s “lack of respect” for the board by not consulting with regents before sending a fax announcing his endorsement of Hirono….

In a May 8, 2003, memo to Dobelle, former Maui regent C. Everett Dowling asked the president to provide the board a summary of his expenses charged to the UH Foundation and of his travel, including costs for other people traveling with him. As part of last year’s annual evaluation of the president, Dowling also asked for a summary of Dobelle’s fund-raising efforts….

Former board Chairman Bert Kobayashi followed up with another memo on June 17, 2003, repeating Dowling’s request. [Former regent Bert Kobayashi is to former governor Ben Cayetano as current regent Kitty Lagareta is to current governor Linda Lingle–strong political allies in both cases.] …

At a press conference announcing his hiring, Dobelle, with the regents standing behind him, announced several high-level personnel appointments.

Board members were stunned because personnel appointments have to be approved by the board, and no one had been given advance notice.

The business community seems far more stunned at Dobelle’s firing than the university community does. The former have probably been drooling over all the promises of new campus construction projects. In October 2002, Hawaii Business magazine named Dobelle one of “The 10 most influential people in Hawaii” (in #3 position after First Hawaiian Bank CEO Walter Dods and U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, both of whom were said to be among Dobelle’s strongest backers; Dods was on the selection committee). In January 2003, Pacific Business News reported, “Evan Dobelle, president of the University of Hawaii, has been named as the 2002 Sales Person of the Year by the Sales and Marketing Executives of Honolulu.”

Two MidWeek magazine columnists weigh in on opposite sides. Dan Boylan, a Democratic Party insider who served on the committee that selected Dobelle and writes a column called “Mostly Politics,” manages in the 23 June 2004 issue to blame the whole affair on partisan politics, while explicitly acknowledging that Dobelle was a compulsively partisan political hack [which was very likely a feature, not a bug, for the selection committee].

Dobelle let his partisanship blind him to his responsibility to the university he led. [One could say the same for the selection committee!] Dobelle, the former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and protocol officer for Democratic President Jimmy Carter, couldn’t rise above his party loyalty.

The other columnist, veteran newsman Bob Jones, is much harsher in the 30 June 2004 issue.

Three observations from one of the regents: 1) Six of the ten regents who voted for the firing are card-carrying democrats. 2) If the public knew the mountain of data we have they’d be asking why we didn’t fire him earlier. 3) The BOR attorney said he felt they had a strong case for showing moral turpitude.

Jones’s column on 23 June 2004 ends off on an equally harsh note.

We may find that the vice president who’s now acting president and who previously ran the UH Business School, David McClain, is the right man at the right time.

I sure wouldn’t want to go back to the same old search committee that brought us Trinity College’s leftover [and his hapless predecessor].

A year ago, on 4 July 2003, long-time Hawai‘i muckraking reporter Ian Lind blogged a harbinger of Dobelle’s problems:

Both Honolulu papers this morning report on the resignation of Maui developer Everett Dowling from the University of Hawaii’s Board of Regents. Both focus on the flap over Dowling’s potential conflict of interest in a proposed land deal. But Dowling also been one of President Evan Dobelle’s key backers on the board, and his departure could signal rockier relations between the president and the board.

For decades, Hawai‘i’s dominant Democrats have seen the University as primarily a construction site, not an instruction site. Dobelle certainly fit the bill in that regard.

Perhaps Dobelle thought Hawai‘i operated the way Connecticut operated under now disgraced Republican Gov. John G. Rowland (due to resign on 1 July), with whom he cooperated on urban renewal projects.

UPDATE (13 July 2004): KITV investigative reporter Keoki Kerr adds several new details about ongoing investigation of Dobelle’s finances:

UH regents are investigating whether Dobelle’s wife attended a college reunion instead of going to an official conference on a trip paid for by the UH Foundation, sources told KITV 4 News. An audit revealed the foundation spent $4,100 to send his wife, Kit, to a conference at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, representing her husband. However, investigators want to know how she attended a UM Amherst class reunion at the same time.

Another issue under investigation is why a UH fiscal officer who raised questions about pricey renovations to the president’s College Hill mansion was forced out on administrative leave. In 2001, renovations there soared from an initial $170,000 to $1.2 million, including $500 for a birdcage….

[T]he regents are also looking into about $70,000 in renovations to Dobelle’s office at Bachman Hall on the UH Manoa campus.

The Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii lent the president’s office [$70,000] for the work in 2001 and Dobelle’s office didn’t pay the money back for nearly three years, until May of this year, sources said.

That raised eyebrows because RCUH’s mission is research and training, not office renovations for the president….

Dobelle knew his job was in jeopardy months before he was fired. Sources said at least one regent told Dobelle to start looking for another job as far back as January of this year, six months before he was fired.