by Andrew Walden
Nation building has been very good to John Waihee III operative Norma Wong, convicted criminal Harry Mattson, and Washington lobbyist Dennis Dwyer.
Contracts with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) reveal hundreds of thousands of dollars in Kanaiolowalu “consulting” fees paid in 2012 and 2013 to Dwyer and Wong.
Native Hawaiian Roll Commission budget reports leaked to Hawai’i Free Press reveal expenditures for “Services on a Fee Basis” exceeding $1.1M -- $242,262.92 in 2012 and $877,505.96 in 2013.
Waihee chairs the Kanaiolowalu Roll Commission. Dwyer, Wong and Waihee have a long history going back to the early 1990s. Together they worked to save the million-dollar-a-year salaries of of the corrupt Broken Trust trustees of Kamehameha Schools and more recently lobbied for federal funds to pay for Honolulu Rail.
Mugshot: Harry Mattson
Akamai readers will remember Harry Mattson as the convicted criminal tax cheat who served as “Chief Strategist” for Kirk Caldwell’s 2012 Mayoral campaign and then appointed secretly as ‘Chief of Staff’ until exposed by Hawai’i Free Press, February 1, 2013. Mattson shows up repeatedly in Kanaiolowalu planning meetings detailed in Wong's invoices to OHA. Wong and Mattson were partners in now-dissolved public relations firm Mattson & Company.
A budget breakdown shows Kanaiolowalu consultants including:
|
2012 Budget |
2013 Budget (07-03-12) |
Combined |
| Database Admin |
50,000 |
15,000 |
65,000 |
| Genealogy |
0 |
9,000 |
9,000 |
| Kau Inoa Verification |
0 |
15,000 |
15,000 |
| Print/Collateral Consultant |
30,000 |
20,000 |
50,000 |
| TV/Radio Production |
250,000 |
40,000 |
290,000 |
| Message Coordination |
40,000 |
15,000 |
55,000 |
| Direct Mail & Postal Consultant |
132,580 |
293,000 |
425,580 |
| Collateral Material Consultant |
150,000 |
170,000 |
320,000 |
| Research & Enrollment Consultant |
75,000 |
100,000 |
175,000 |
| Continental Outreach Consultant |
0 |
15,000 |
15,000 |
|
|
|
|
| TOTALS |
727,580 |
692,000 |
1,419,580 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Radio Placement |
185,000 |
200,000 |
385,000 |
| TV/Web Placement |
0 |
315,000 |
315,000 |
| Print Advertising |
50,000 |
115,000 |
165,000 |
|
|
|
|
| TOTALS |
235,000 |
630,000 |
865,000 |
In total $1,140,000 is budgeted to ‘consultants’ for print, TV, radio, direct mail and ‘collateral’ but only $865,000 is to pay for placement of the ads the consultants create.
How much did Wong and Dwyer get?
OHA Contract #2732 dated February 10, 2012 and signed by OHA’s Interim CEO and COO Richard Pezzulo, provides Dwyer with $410.00 per hour, $280 per hour for his “associates” and $85.00 per hour for “others” plus travel reimbursement not to exceed a contract total of $200,000. Dwyer starts out with a $100,000 “retainer” paid to his DC lobbying firm, Williams and Jensen, PLLC. OHA General Counsel Robert Klein is designated “contract monitor and principal liaison between contractor and OHA.”
Dwyer’s contract language specifies: “The contractor is not authorized to identify OHA as a client…(and)…is not authorized to communicate with the public, including the press, about OHA or this matter without the advance approval of OHA.” It is not clear which of the above ‘consulting’ functions would logically be performed by a Washington lobbyist like Dwyer. It is much more likely his function is to lobby the Obama administration to create a fake ‘Hawaiian’ Indian tribe.
OHA Contract #2710 dated December 1, 2011 but retroactive to October 14, 2011, and signed by OHA CEO Clyde Namuo and COO Pezzulo, gives Norma Wong a relatively modest $25,000. The amount is significant because it is the maximum a CEO may contract out without approval from the Board of Trustees. Pezzulo is designated Wong’s “contract monitor and principal liaison between contractor and OHA.”
Wong’s contract was then amended three times. The first amendment, March 28, 2012, after Kamanao Crabbe had been selected as OHA CEO, boosted Wong’s contract maximum to $100,000. The second amendment, September 17, 2012, boosted her contract to $176,500, and the third amendment extended the contract duration to June 30, 2014 without increasing the $176,500 payment cap. Wong’s invoices “for work by Norma Wong and Harry Mattson” reveal she charges $125 per hour.
Wong and Dwyer’s contracts total $376,000 – 26% of the $1,419,580 budgeted for ‘consultants’.
Who got the other 74%?
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Related: Caldwell Secretly Appoints ‘Chief of Staff’--Convicted Criminal Harry Mattson
Related: Sai: Wong, Dwyer, Namuo Rake in Millions from Kanaiolowalu
PDF: Kanaiolowalu Budget Materials
PDF: Wong Contract
PDF: Dwyer Contract