A top University of Hawaii faculty union leader received an overwhelming vote of confidence from the union's board of directors last week following a challenge to his extensive lobbying on behalf of private clients and the alleged use of union facilities and staff for those private business purposes.
The vote came during a meeting of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly's board of directors on Friday, April 7. One of two motions by Jerry Comcowich, representing faculty in the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology, would have required prior board approval of any outside consulting by UHPA employees.
The motion was understood by all to be directed at John Radcliffe, associate executive director of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly for 17 years, and also founder and principal of Radcliffe and Associates LLC, described on the company's web site as "one of Hawaii’s leading governmental and legislative consulting firms."
"It is difficult for me to understand how outside consulting by UHPA employees benefits UHPA either directly or indirectly," Comcowich wrote in a memo supporting the motion.
"I am particularly troubled by the potential for confusion when a UHPA employee is speaking in a public or private forum representing the interests of parties other than the University of Hawaii faculty," Comcowich wrote. "I believe the membership of UHPA will be better served by employees whose total employment focus is not on the interests and concerns of a third party but on the interests and concerns exclusively of the University of Hawaii faculty." (emphasis in the original)
Comcowich was ruled out of order when he distributed several documents to the board and attempted to question whether Radcliffe had used UHPA facilities, including fax and phone, in his private lobbying business.
The documents are from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library at the University of California, San Francisco, which has gathered records generated by years of litigation involving the major tobacco companies, including Radcliffe's client, R.J. Reynolds.
One document is a fax cover sheet dated February 12, 2001, on Radcliffe and Associates stationary addressed to Mike Phillips at R.J.Reynolds, forwarding a copy of Hawaii's required lobbyist authorization form. The address line indicates the fax was sent from the UHPA office, and was sent on behalf of Radcliffe and Associates by Celeste Nip, then an UPHA employee.
Nip is now a registered lobbyist with clients including the Hawaii Fire Fighters Association, Verizon Wireless, Eli Lilly and Co., Kraft Foods Global, Inc., and Philip Morris USA.
Another document cited by Comcowich dates from August 1994 and was also faxed from the UHPA office to R.J. Reynolds. It contains Radcliffe's recommendations for political contributions to be made by the tobacco company during the 1994 elections.
"What follows is a list of people and amounts of money that I think ought to be contributed by RJRT in the upcoming campaign," the memo reads. "Keep in mind that ours is usually a Primary Race deal--by the time November rolls around, our guys are already organized and getting into mischief."
Radcliffe added: "If funds become available, I'd like RJRT to be able to be a player in BOTH political parties by giving to both the 'R's and the 'D's."
In response to a question from iLind.net, Radcliffe acknowledged "there must have been a couple of instances in the last seventeen years when I must have screwed up, and put a non-UHPA piece of paper into a fax machine by mistake."
"If I have not been reprimanded for that I will be," Radcliffe said. "I will insist on it. I assure you that any such action was extremely rare and entirely inadvertent, and that I apologize for it. I have never used the UHPA postal resources, phones, paper, material, etc. to do private business."
Radcliffe says similar questions have been asked and fully answered many times in the past.
"The point is that I was hired by UHPA to do what I still do, how I do it, some 17 years ago," Radcliffe replied in an email yesterday. "According to all who have had occasion to observe or a right to evaluate: I am a success. I get things done."
"One relatively small part of that which I do is lobbying," Radcliffe said. "It is that part which gets people going."
Radcliffe, who also serves as chair of the state's Employer-Union Health Fund Trust, insisted that his lobbying on behalf of private clients does not violate any union policy and does not create any conflicts of interest.
Radcliffe dismissed Comcowich as a "dissident Board member who generally gets out voted 'every one else to one' ", and who, Radcliffe charged, "has been attempting to hijack a very successful union by causing as much dissension in it as possible."
According to lobbyist registration records filed with the State Ethics Commission, Radcliffe is currently a lobbyist for UHPA and 18 private clients, including Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison operator which contracts with the state to house island prisoners on the mainland, the Hawaii Insurers Council, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the country's second largest cigarette manufacturer.
Questions about Radcliffe's outside interests have surfaced before within UHPA, and each time he has emerged with the solid backing of the board. More than a decade ago, UHPA adopted guidelines for outside employment by union staff which require disclosure of clients and review by the union's executive director.
Minutes of UHPA board meeting on April 19, 2002, record a similar discussion.
| "An inquiry was made about the email that was circulating amongst faculty members concerning UHPA Associate Executive Director John Radcliffe and the petition that was being solicited by a UH-Manoa faculty member outside of Campus Center 309 where the Annual Membership meeting was being conducted. Directors were informed that in addition to his work at UHPA, the Associate Executive Director is a consultant and lobbyist for other organizations. According to the UHPA Employee Personnel Policy and Procedures adopted by the Board of Directors for the staff, the Associate Executive Director may engage in outside employment as long as he complies with the guidelines. If there were an appearance of conflict of interest or some impropriety, Personnel Committee Chair David Miller conveyed that he would appreciate the matter being brought to his attention. If UHPA should receive signed petitions regarding the staff, the matter would be referred to the Personnel Committee. Mr. Radcliffe serves as an advisor to a local corporation interested in bringing two casinos to Hawai'i and he also represents, as a consultant, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. UHPA has not taken a position on whether or not gaming or the sale of tobacco products ought to be legal in Hawai'i; therefore, there has not been a determination made that there is a conflict of interest." |
In a lengthy memo prepared for the UHPA board last year, Radcliffe provided two "real life examples" of his work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
The first involved involved a cap on the amount the company would have to post as an appeal bond in the event it loses a judgement in a Hawaii court.
Radcliffe explained: "My colleague and I went in to the Attorney General and attempted to ask for a $20 million legislated bond cap, as there has never been a court decision in Hawaii where a judgment has even come close to $20 million--and may never. The AG insisted on a $150 million bond cap, a ridiculously high amount.
"We agreed to that. The AG was happy. The company was less happy."
In the second example was the "Kauai Kolada" flavored cigarettes briefly marketed in Hawaii by Reynolds.
"Had I been called," Radcliffe writes, "my response would have been: 'Coconut flavored, lime flavored, cigarettes? With a dancing hula girl on the pack? Are you people all crazy? Are you suicidal? No! Never.'"
But other documents buried in the Tobacco Documents Library disclose potentially more controversial actions.
In a September 14, 1996 fax to R.J. Reynolds representative David Powers, Radcliffe pleads for additional campaign contributions to tip the scales in the next week's primary election.
"We could use some more contributions here and here's why," Radcliffe wrote.
"House District 24: The incumbent is Jim Shon. He is a main enemy of tobacco in the House. Samson Aiona can beat this guy in the General. I have interviewed Sam and He would be a good vote for us. I recommend $1,000."
The problem, of course, is that Shon was also an advocate for education and the university. He may have had the UHPA endorsement, although those endorsement records are not readily available.
This fax, like other Radcliffe documents in the tobacco collection, was sent from the UH Professional Assembly office.
