Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and Speaker of the House Calvin Say in late May named five members each from the Senate and House of Representatives respectively to serve on a joint committee investigating the Bureau of Conveyances. Hanabusa named Jill
Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and Speaker of the House Calvin Say in late May named five members each from the Senate and House of Representatives respectively to serve on a joint committee investigating the Bureau of Conveyances.
Hanabusa named Jill Tokuda, Russell Kokubun, Carol Fukunaga, David Ige, and Mike Gabbard to represent the Senate.
Say named Joe Souki, Sharon Har, Karl Rhoads, James Tokioka and Cynthia Thielen to represent the House.
“Given what we’ve seen, we have an obligation to look further and ensure the security of our most important assets,” said Tokuda, according to a press release. “The committee has an opportunity to answer a great many questions surrounding the Bureau of Conveyances, and help reassure the public that the bureau’s critical responsibilities are being handled properly. Our goal is to come out of this with specific recommendations to ensure the integrity of the system, and provide fair access to vital data.”
Souki emphasized the impact the bureau has on the community. “By focusing on the management of the bureau, I hope that the Legislature will be able to help turn this troubled agency around in order to better serve the public,” he said, in the release. “This is a bureau that handles people’s recorded documents and affects their lives and property. We have a special responsibility to ensure that the operations and transactions are not only timely but secure.”
The committee was created pursuant to a Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 226, passed this legislative session, to investigate the fiscal and personnel management of the bureau, which is part of the Department of Land and Natural Resources. Under the resolution, the committee will investigate and make recommendations to the Legislature regarding:
• The management of the employees and administrators of the bureau;
• The fiscal management and accountability of the bureau;
• The rules, procedures, and fee schedules relating to information-sharing between the bureau and private title companies and individual users and subscribers; and
• The security of recorded documents, access to such documents from private computers, and the potential for tampering with those documents.
The committee will meet to determine its rules and schedules for conducting the hearings.
It has retained the services of investigator Hilton Lui, who previously conducted an ethics investigation into the bureau for the Hawai‘i State Ethics Commission, to assist with the investigation.
Concerns regarding the Bureau of Conveyances arose in the past legislative session during the reconfirmation hearings on the nomination of Board of Land and Natural Resources Director Peter Young.
In the course of those hearings, the Senate Committee on Water, Land, Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs learned of ongoing investigations by the Attorney General and the Ethics Commission into activities at the Bureau. Senator Tokuda was a member of that committee
