| Hawaii’s State Attorney
General has been asked by the Kaua’i Ethics Board to investigate fraud
or improprieties by two groups that staged a November 22,1997 fundraiser
that reportedly collected monies to fight for the retention of Hawaii’s
present legal restrictions granting state recognition for opposite-sex
marriages only.
The groups, Hawaii’s Future
Now and Save Traditional Marriage are said to have combined forces and
solicited funds under false pretences.
Kaua’i County Director, Wallace
Rezents, Jr. attended a seminar co-hosted by the anti-same-sex marriage
forces and paid, using county funds, for his ticket. The Ethics Board claims
that no one in Kaia’i county had been made aware of the seminar’s purpose.
Save Traditional Marriage has been advocating a Hawaiian constitutional
amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
Hawaii’s Future Today denied
that either group had committed fraud. Bill Clifton, an attorney for Hawaii’s
Future Today insists that letters sent to county recipients clearly stated
that they should make out their checks to Save Traditional Marriage.
A Kaua’i Ethics Board member,
William Woods, believes that the county should be able to recover the $125
for Director Rezents’ seminar attendance as well as $647.32 to cover the
Director’s salary, transportation and per diem costs for the seminar.
The Kaua’i county attorney,
Hartwell Blake, said he’d originally intended to simply reissue a $125
check to Hawaii’s Future Today, but the Kaua’i Ethics Board argued against
such a move on the grounds that Hawaii’s Future Today had not been fully
forthcoming about how Kaua’i county funds were, in fact, benefiting Save
Traditional Marriage, a political action committee.
Other organizations
and businesses sent representatives to the November 22 event and had not
expected, they said, that their monies spent was going into Save Traditional
Marriage coffers.
Among those who expressed
astonishment were The Australian Consulate on O’ahu, a Honolulu Saturn
auto dealership and an import business, Royal Copenhagen.
Hawaii’s Campaign Spending
Commission began an investigation into the fundraisers earlier this Spring,
its executive director, Robert Watanda stating, “We have to examine whether
there are any violations of any state campaign spending laws.”
Related
Links: http://www.xq.com/hermp/ |
