An AI generated and office reviewed report summary.

Report No. 25-07 

Audit of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority

 In 2020, as it entered its third decade, the Hawai‘i Tourism concluded that it needed a change.  Its continuous drive to increase visitor numbers had taken a toll on Hawai‘i’s people and their natural environment. What was needed was a “re-balancing” of priorities, and for that reason, “destination management” would be the Authority’s focus and at the heart of the new strategic plan.

In its 2020 – 2025 Strategic Plan, HTA defined destination management as: “attracting and educating responsible visitors; advocating for solutions to overcrowded attractions, overtaxed infrastructure, and other tourism-related problems; and working with other responsible agencies to improve natural and cultural assets valued by both Hawai‘i residents and visitors.” 

As part of this emphasis on destination management, HTA developed three-year Destination Management Action Plans for six islands. Actions and sub-actions vary in the individual DMAPs, such as protecting and preserving culturally significant places and tourist “hotspots”; as well as increasing communication, engagement, and outreach efforts with the community among other initiatives.

In Report No. 25-07, Audit of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, we assessed HTA’s achievement of its 2016 and 2020 – 2025 strategic plans’ destination management goals. We also evaluated the effectiveness of the agency’s DMAPs. 

Learn how:

• HTA’s new emphasis on destination management is not materially different from its prior efforts; largely a reshuffling of past and continuing programs. 
• The effort doesn’t seem to have involved any increased financial commitment; overall spending on destination management efforts remained generally level.
• The Authority’s DMAP effort was largely ineffective, with most actions not addressing hotspots, predated the effort, or had already completed.
• Many DMAP actions were impractical or unrelated to destinations and their management. 

Thanks for listening. You can find this and other reports at: auditor.hawaii.gov

An AI generated and office reviewed report summary.

In January 2016, Governor David Ige announced in his State of the State speech that he was working to cool 1,000 classrooms by the end of the year.  That May, the Hawai‘i Legislature approved $100 million in general funds to cool 1,000 public school classrooms by the end of that calendar year.  The department’s plan would later be referred to as the “Cool Classrooms Initiative.” 

Three years later, the State’s heat abatement efforts changed course with the Department of Education’s (DOE) introduction of its School Directed AC program, which unlike the Cool Classrooms Initiative, gave schools the authority to air condition classrooms themselves, with minimal DOE involvement.  

Report No. 25-09, An Update on the Department of Education’s Heat Abatement Efforts is an extensive review and assessment of the legislative and funding history of this initiative to account for the $100 million.  We also reviewed DOE’s subsequent heat abatement effort, the School Directed AC program.  

Learn how:

·       The Cool Classrooms Initiative’s rushed planning and poor decisions early on contributed to DOE moving forward with expensive and complex solar-powered air conditioning systems that ultimately didn’t work very well.

·       DOE was unable to provide an accounting of the $100 million, requiring the Office to estimate the amount spent through contract documents and other records, some of which were incomplete and missing. 

·       The Office was able to estimate that the Cool Classrooms Initiative cooled 838 classrooms at a cost of about $105 million, an average of more than $120,000 per classroom.

·       DOE provided minimal structure and oversight over its School Directed AC program, which followed the Cool Classrooms Initiative.  The department’s knowledge of and involvement in the program to be so incomplete and limited that the Office was unable to assess it.

Read the full report here:
https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Reports/2025/25-09.pdf

Report summary:
https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Overviews/2025/25-09AuditorSummary.pdf

Thanks for listening. You can find this and other reports at: auditor.hawaii.gov

In Audit of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Report No. 23-04, we examined certain OHA activities with respect to land, including both its commercial properties and legacy lands.  Specifically, we report our findings with respect to OHA’s process to identify and select commercial properties to acquire, OHA’s development of those commercial properties, including its Kaka‘ako Makai lands, and OHA’s oversight and management of its legacy lands, which include culturally significant properties.

Read the full report here:
https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Reports/2023/23-04.pdf

Report summary:
https://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Overviews/2023/23-04AuditorSummary.pdf

Thanks for listening. You can find this and other reports at: auditor.hawaii.gov