The best book on Hawaii politics this year is the Hawaii State Auditor’s 2014 Annual Report.

But only if you read it like a novel.

The Auditor’s Office does program and performance reviews of governmental agencies to see what’s working and what’s not. By legislative mandate it then follows up to see whether the agencies implemented these recommendations. The report summarizes the office’s 2014 activities.

Ho hum so far, right?

The report’s overall style is not novelistic. Rather, it’s written in bureaucratese. The guts of the report are the auditor’s findings and recommendations, with the agencies’ responses presented alongside. All very tidy, organized and unemotional.

The Hawaii Superferry in its brief heyday. The auditor’s report has something to add to the conversation about the fate of the four barges that served the ferries.

billsophoto/Flickr.com

Sounds like the sort of thing that ends up in someone’s wastebasket instead of someone’s Kindle.

But think of the report as an unconventional novel whose chapters are scattered and underdeveloped. Once you as the reader translate it into the way ordinary folks talk and think about politics, and then put this in dialog form, the report becomes a gold mine.

The Superferry and IT

Like a good novel, the auditor’s report has important, transcendent themes.  The report itself does not identify them, so again it becomes the reader’s job to do so. 

First, the scope of what government is involved in is enormous. That may not come as real news, but looking at the vast range of issues the report examines — mandatory health insurance for people with cleft palates, hearing aids, amateur boxing, licensing veterinarian technicians, the management of Mauna Kea — brings this home.

Second, the failure to probably monitor, assess and follow up is extremely common. It’s typical for government agencies not to know whether they are accomplishing their mission. Too little time and energy is devoted to inspection and enforcement.

Finally, these are not just Hawaii’s problems. Simply labeling this as fraud, waste and abuse underestimates them. As Peter Schuck points out in his thoughtful book “Why Government Fails So Often,” these behaviors are tightly woven into the fabric of modern governing and are extraordinarily difficult to change.

The barges that served the Hawaii Superferry are rotting away unmaintained in Honolulu Harbor.

As important as they are, these themes are only the background. The real meat of the auditor’s report is in the specific stories it tells about Hawaii. With the report’s facts and your imagination, you can create an excellent picture of how our state government works — or doesn’t.

At the start, the report’s style is in fact very informal and accessible. It tells two stories in conventional ways, and it is easy to see what is going on.

One involves that familiar mark of government mess-ups, the Superferry. According to the 2014 report, that disaster continues to haunt us. During the ferry’s heyday, the state spent $30 million to $60 million of taxpayers’ money to build four barges specifically for the ferry. The Department of Transportation was supposed to sell them in 2009. No such luck. Instead, the barges are rotting away unmaintained in Honolulu Harbor. 

Another story involved the Hawaii Teachers Standards Board. You may never have heard of this agency, but it’s no trouble getting the drift.

First of all, the board got into a dispute with its IT contractor, which totally stopped the new and critical licensing process.  Then, as one board member put it, before the dispute was settled the contractor “just vanished.” Unfortunately, the board members had no idea that that this had happened. They thought the dispute had been settled when in fact nothing at all was really going on and the new licensing standards remained in limbo.   

Both of these stories are real corkers, the kinds of examples that make people say, “What do you expect? It’s the state of Hawaii.”   

There are other corkers, but they are not as obvious because of the way the Auditor’s Office presents its information. That is where reader imagination and translation has to come into play

The Department of Hawaiian Homelands, especially its leasing process, is one. The Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts is another.  See for yourself. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry.

Insert Dialogue Here

Let’s take a look at a third, the Department of Transportation, to see how much clearer the problem is once it is described in everyday language and form. 

The DOT section of the Auditor’s Report begins with this terse overall assessment:

“Department of Transportation leadership should assume a stronger role in ensuring proper procurement practices and addressing violations across departmental divisions. The department must emphasize the importance of compliance with procurement laws and rules, particularly with its Airports Division, and assist all divisions in strengthening their procurement control environment.

Alongside the page is the DOT’s equally terse overall response:

This becomes much clearer once you translate the auditor’s DOT report into the way people actually talk in real life.

“The Department of Transportation’s management reviewed the recommendations in the 13-04 audit report and made improvements to emphasize the importance of compliance to procurement laws and rules.”

The rest of the auditor’s DOT chapter simply lists specifics that elaborate on the report’s recommendations and the DOT responses, one by one.

That language and format minimizes how bad things really are over at DOT when it comes to spending the taxpayers’ money.

This becomes much clearer once you translate the auditor’s DOT report into the way people actually talk in real life.

Report + imagination + translation + emotion equals this:

Auditor: When it comes to managing the taxpayers’ money, there is nothing you are doing right. Your whole procurement process, if you can even call that mess a process, is non-existent or flawed.

Because it is not possible for anyone from politicians to ordinary taxpayers to tell whether you are spending money properly, you flunk transparency and accountability. Democracy-wise, that’s as bad as it gets.

You are the poster child of what people are thinking about when it comes to “wasting the taxpayers’ money.”

DOT: Now wait a minute.  We did what you told us to do in your 2013 report.

Auditor: Don’t interrupt.  Take the process of hiring contractors.  When it comes right down to it, you have no criteria to determine whether a contractor who bids on a project can actually do the work. You don’t even know how to write proper contract specs. Plus, the way you oversee the contractors once they begin to work is terrible.

DOT: That’s not totally true.  Besides, we’ve already begun to …

Auditor: And you make your procurement people do this work without training them? How could you let this happen? Frigging unbelievable. You’re supervisors. So get your okoles in gear and supervise.

DOT: Is it finally our turn?

Auditor: I don’t like your tone.

DOT: Hey how would you feel if some outsider came and …

Auditor: Watch it! You gonna respond or not?

DOT: All right already. We get it. You are a little too hard on us, but we’re not going to make a big deal of that. Point is, today’s a new day. We have already started to do most of the important things that you recommend to improve our work. Some of it is already taken care of. Some will be in the near future.

Things will get better soon. Trust us.

Auditor: Trust you? You’re kidding, right? Operations like yours, it’s the reason why the Legislature mandates us to come back and take another look. So see you again real soon.

DOT: (Quiet muttering.)

Look, the 2014 Auditor’s Report is not going to make any book club reading list. But the exercise of reading it is as valuable as the exercise of reading a dense novel. Because the reader has to work a little slower and little harder, she gains insights that she would have otherwise missed.

Important themes and compelling stories. Give it a shot.