HILO — Five current or former high-level Hawaii County officials will receive immunity for their testimony in the upcoming theft trial of Mayor Billy Kenoi, according to court records.
The five are Managing Director Randy Kurohara; former Managing Director Bill Takaba; Finance Director Deanna Sako; former Finance Director Nancy Crawford; and Paulette Wilson, also known as Paulette Cainglit, an executive assistant to Kenoi. They are among 13 people who have been subpoenaed as prosecution witnesses by Deputy Attorney General Kevin Takata.
Records indicate orders have been signed granting the five transactional immunity, the broadest form of immunity to compel testimony, which is also known as “total” or “blanket” immunity. According to the legal website nolo.com, transactional immunity offers “complete protection from future prosecution for any matter mentioned in the immunized testimony.”
Kenoi is scheduled for trial Oct. 10 in Hilo before Honolulu Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario, who’s hearing the case because all Big Island judges who were on the bench when Kenoi was indicted on March 23 recused themselves from hearing the case.
The mayor is charged with second-degree theft, a Class C felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment upon conviction. He’s also facing two misdemeanor theft charges, plus three counts of tampering with a government record, a misdemeanor, and making a false statement under oath, a petty misdemeanor.
The charges stem from a yearlong investigation by the state attorney general’s office into the mayor’s misuse of his county credit card, also known as a pCard. The investigation started after West Hawaii Today reported Kenoi used his pCard to pay an $892 tab at Club Evergreen, a Honolulu hostess bar.
The mayor racked up almost $130,000 in charges on the card by then, including $1,219.69 for a surfboard, and a $700 tab at a Hilo karaoke bar. He also spent $400 at another Honolulu hostess bar, the Camelot Restaurant and Lounge.
Kenoi reimbursed the county for $22,292 in charges between January 2009 and March 2015. He later paid back approximately $9,500 more after Big Island newspapers published their stories examining his pCard use.
The county issued its own pCard audit in July 2015 that found 145 pCard transactions totaling $23,683 in the Mayor’s Office didn’t follow county policy, had a questionable public purpose or might have violated state law. That included $3,689 in charges deemed personal.
Other current and former county officials subpoenaed by Takata include Nancy Kelly, the budget administrator; Melody Parker, a deputy corporation counsel; and Kevin Dayton, a Honolulu Star-Advertiser reporter and formerly a Kenoi executive assistant.
Others on the prosecution’s subpoena list are: Brian Moriki, an assistant vice president and manager of the records management department of First Hawaiian Bank; Daniel Hanagami, the attorney general’s chief investigator; Boyd Sakai, an investigator for the attorney general; Nancy Cook Lauer, the West Hawaii Today reporter who first reported on Kenoi’s misuse of his pCard; and Daniel K. Kailiawa.
A hearing on numerous pretrial motions is scheduled for Sept. 16 in Hilo. Those include several motions by Kenoi’s attorneys to dismiss the indictment or specific charges in the indictment.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.