HONOLULU City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi has agreed to pay a $500 ethics fine for not disclosing her role as a director for six CUSOs of Aloha Pacific FCU when she introduced and voted for a bill that could have lowered the property taxes of credit unions.
The Honolulu Ethics Commission on Friday said Kobayashi admitted she failed to disclose her credit union ties when she voted on a bill to change the real property tax exemption for credit unions last year.
The commission says Kobayashi's public and private duties conflicted, and ethics laws required her to promptly disclose the conflict to the public.
Kobayashi disclosed the conflict after commission staff brought it to her attention. She also resigned her directorship with the subsidiaries and admitted responsibility for not following ethics laws.
But after she accepted responsibility for the lapse, Kobayashi said she is unhappy with the Commission's handling of the case because she had made public her interest with the Aloha Pacific subsidiaries in an annual financial disclosure filed several months before the vote in question. In addition, she said, the bill for which she is being penalized would not have benefited credit unions but actually would have allowed them fewer exemptions and possibly increase their taxes.
