Oct. 7, 2026, 5 p.m.
Velma Santos Community Center
To: Maui Department of Management
Josiah Nishita, Managing Director
Erin Wade, Deputy Managing Director
From: Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
Ted Kefalas, Director of Strategic Campaigns
RE: PROPOSED GRANT RULES
Aloha Managing Director Nishita, Deputy Managing Director Wade and department staff,
The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii offers comments on — and amendments to — the department’s proposed grant rules, which would standardize certain grant management policies across all county departments.
Grassroot appreciates that the county is seeking to improve its grant management policies. The current system that varies by department creates possibilities for nepotism, conflicts of interest and insufficient monitoring of how grantees use taxpayer dollars.[1]
The proposed rules feature important updates, such as explicitly prohibiting nepotism and conflicts of interest in the informal grant review committees that departments sometimes use to help determine whether a grant will be awarded to a particular applicant.
Furthermore, the proposed rules would require the managing director to establish a minimum score an application must meet for the applicant to be awarded funds.
Grassroot encourages the Department of Management to also require that all funded grant applications, quarterly reports and final reports be posted to either the website of the department administering the grant or the Department of Management’s website.
This could be accomplished by amending subchapter 4 of the proposed rules to read:
§02-201-18 Accessibility. (a) All grant applications approved for funding under these rules and quarterly reports and final reports prepared under this subchapter shall be posted publicly to the website of the department administering the grant in a searchable format.
This change would improve the County’s efforts to reduce actual or potential corruption and increase transparency.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Ted Kefalas
Director of Strategic Campaigns
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
1050 Bishop St. #508 | Honolulu, HI 96813 | 808-864-1776 | info@grassrootinstitute.org
[1] Jonathan Helton, “Op-Ed: New rules for awarding county grants could boost transparency, but more action needed,” MauiNow, Sept. 20, 2026.
