i L i n d . n e t

My comments here on Saturday concerning SB3171 (registration of charities) drew a response from a friend that might be of interest.

Here’s his initial comment:

This bill is going to kill the small non-profits. Look at all the PTAs, soccer and little leagues, and other non-profits that are going to become criminals under this law. Think again that this isn’t going to be used to go after some poor smuck that doesn’t know how to prepare financial statements.

Then again, it is a boon to CPAs, because it is going to have the non-profits paying out of their noses to get into compliance with this law. Old saying, be careful for what you wish for.

I then countered:

PTA’s are exempted.
Organizations raising less than $25,000 annually are exempt from annual reporting.
Organizations will be able to substitute their federal tax forms for any state paperwork.
Organizations under $1 million do not have to provide an audited statement.
Perhaps I missed the criminal penalties, but I don’t see them here.
Much of the regulatory burden falls on professional solicitors (ie, generally, telemarketers).
I don’t see the big issues that you’re seeing here.

I should have said something about the several cases of small nonprofits being ripped off by insiders. Not that registration will deter embezzlement and theft, but at least it might cause groups to pay a bit more attention to how their funds are handled and accounted for. That would not be a bad thing.

One story heard second hand over the weekend is that Aloha offered the entire company free of charge to United if United would keep flying and the employees hired. Only when oil hit $111 a barrel did United say no. It came that close.

Here are links to several of my recent stories in Honolulu Weekly, which is still in the process of digging out from a somewhat botched remake of their web site.

March 5: DOT fails to produce annual bikeway report.

March 12: An interesting ruling by the Intermediate Court of Appeals involves an alleged con man who I’ve been tracking for more than a decade.

March 19: When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go, but the number of publicly accessible toilets in Honolulu has been rapidly dwindling as businesses have restricted previously available facilities, citing the high costs of maintenance, and neither state nor county governments have stepped up to address the resulting problems.

March 26: Inside the Governor’s mailbox

April 2: Does Doomsday require an EIS?

I won’t give anything away here, but my latest piece appearing in the Weekly on Wednesday is a good one, and I don’t understand why others haven’t reported on this situation previously. Stay tuned.

Here’s one of Meda’s finds, a wonderful designer pasta server in the shape of a snail. You can see the snail motif in the photo on the left, and the functional pasta server in the view on the right.

It’s made by Viceversa Design, and is stamped with the name of designer Luca Trazzi.

All for just 99 cents at the Goodwill Store in Kaimuki.