We’ve hit another wall in our efforts to examine expenses in Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona’s office.

Aiona’s office says it needs time to see if its expense records are exempted from the open records law — seven weeks after receiving our initial request. Last month, we wrote about how we ran into problems from the beginning, despite what Aiona has told us about his belief in government transparency.

As part of our efforts to understand how Aiona, a professed fiscal conservative, spends money in his own office, we’ve made five requests to review expenses within Aiona’s office. Most recently, we specifically asked to review invoices, for office supplies, equipment, software and transportation, that had been approved for payment by the lieutenant governor’s office in January and June 2010. Aiona has not complied with any requests to review expenses.

The state open records law, Section 92F, says disclosure of “government purchasing information” is required and that agencies must make it “available for public inspection and duplication during regular business hours.”

Yet this week we received a letter informing us that Aiona’s office needs additional time to respond to the request because:

• “Agency must consult with another person to determine whether the record is exempt from disclosure under chapter 92F, HRS.”
• Our request “requires extensive agency efforts to search, review, or segregate the records or otherwise prepare the records for inspection or copying.”

The letter came 10 business days after we sent our most recent request to Aiona’s office — the maximum number of days an agency has to respond to formal requests. It was sent by Harold Nedd, Aiona’s deputy chief of staff, who has described our requests to look at Aiona’s office expenses as “delicate.”

We’ll keep you posted on how it turns out.