Did You Meet Your Targets This 12 months? – Pff, We Don’t Care

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Our Legislature’s 2023 session is certainly cranked up now.  Committees are revving up and sending out gobs of notices of listening to for the payments earlier than them.  The Legislature is coping with over 3,000 payments launched this 12 months, undoubtedly much more than normal and could also be a report quantity.

One of many different duties that legislators have is oversight of our Government Department companies.  It is a regular perform of presidency.  We elect legislators.  Legislators management the purse strings, and they should be sure that the tax cash we entrust to them is being spent properly and effectively.

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To facilitate this oversight perform, we’ve got various legal guidelines that bear on the budgeting course of.  Considered one of them, HRS part 37-75, requires companies to come back up a “variance report” that’s purported to checklist how a lot they have been budgeted, how a lot was spent, and a story rationalization for any important distinction.  Businesses are additionally tasked with choosing some metrics that may assist the legislators and the general public see how they did, and with posting these metrics.  These experiences are due 30 days earlier than the beginning of the legislative session.  They’re collected by the Division of Finances and Finance, and are posted right here. 

4 years in the past, we examined a few of the variance experiences and concluded that some, not all, of the companies have been principally thumbing their noses on the course of.  We have been hopeful that by bringing these information to mild we may maybe disgrace a few of these companies to get again on the straight and slender path.

Apparently, that didn’t work.

Beneath the Transportation class, right here is a part of the variance report for the Daniel Ok. Inouye Worldwide Airport:

“Variety of accidents per 100,000 sq. toes – NO DATA.”  They clearly understand how massive their space is in sq. toes, so are they telling us they don’t preserve monitor of accidents?  That’s arduous to imagine.  “Common variety of instances airport restrooms are cleaned per day – NO DATA.”  Are you kidding me?  This, by the best way, just isn’t an issue distinctive to Honolulu.  Information for Hilo Worldwide Airport, Ellison Onizuka Kona Worldwide Airport at Keahole, Kahului Airport, Lihue Airport, and ALL of the opposite airports report an analogous lack of knowledge for the metrics, simply as they did 4 years in the past.

These, it’s possible you’ll keep in mind, are metrics they picked themselves.  As we reported 4 years in the past, Airports’ variance experiences in prior years did certainly measure these statistics, as much as the 2014-15 variance report.  In that 12 months’s report, the Airports Division complained that “a lot of its measures are not related and outdated,” and stopped following the legislation at the moment.

In 2019, we additionally complained in regards to the jail system, which had been reporting “NO DATA” when measuring what number of escapes, each first and second diploma, had occurred.  Happily, they appear to have gotten the message and have been posting information for the reason that fiscal 12 months 2020 report.  No escapes!

On the identical time, new situations of companies posting “NO DATA” in response to key metrics are popping up.  The Workplace of Environmental High quality Management, for instance, posted “NO DATA” in response to all metrics in its 2022 variance report, saying it couldn’t compile information as a result of it was transferred to be beneath one other company this previous 12 months.  The College of Hawaii Most cancers Heart is itemizing no information, saying that it’s a new program established by the Legislature.  Actually?  The Most cancers Heart has been round since 1971, so there’s one thing I’m not understanding right here.

For our authorities to function properly and to be pretty evaluated, we want good information and transparency.  Let’s preserve urgent for good information.

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