Dems Shoot Down Construction Funding Audit

HONOLULU--House Democrats today, shot down a friendly amendment that would have the State Auditor review the State's procurement process. Instead, the department in charge of procurement, the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS), will review itself.

Representative Guy Ontai, (R-Mililani) who introduced the amendment commented, "This was a friendly amendment because the original House version of this resolution called for Marion Higa, the State Auditor, to review the controversial Performance Information Procurement System (PIPS), but that was changed by the Senate to have DAGS police themselves. We wanted the original version because passing a measure to ask DAGS to do a self-study on whether DAGS is doing a good job sounds and is pretty ridiculous."

"What we have right now with this resolution is a self-study, and we believe DAGS and every department should already be doing that as part of good management practices," Ontai said. "I think we should be asking the departments how they are doing with their programs, but using their self review as our inquiry into the performance of the procurement process is a little naïve on our part. The whole point of the audit would be to restore public confidence in the procurement system."

The amendment failed along party lines with all 19 Republicans supporting an independent review and 28 Democrats in favor of DAGS studying itself.

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