12 Stones Global · Kilo Aupuni · sole-source watch

Sole-Source & Procurement-Exemption Watch — Maui County

Sole-source means a contract awarded without competition (a HRS 103D-102 exemption). It is legal when justified — and it is exactly the mechanism a Maui official used to steal.

⚠ Why this watch exists. Stewart Stant, former director of Maui County’s Dept. of Environmental Management, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for taking ~$2M in bribes to steer more than $19,000,000 in sole-source contracts and purchase orders to Milton Choy’s H2O Process Systems (U.S. DOJ). Competition is the safeguard sole-source removes — so sole-source awards are where the risk concentrates. DOJ ↗

Posted sole-source / exemption notices

Pulled live from the County’s public procurements page. This is what is voluntarily posted — mostly the Council/legislative branch, often without dollar amounts.

Procurements

June 12, 2018 – Notice to Proceed – Contract No. 6395, Webcasting and Agenda Management Solutions for the Office of Council Services

source: mauicounty.us/procurements ↗

The gap — and the lawful way to close it

The dangerous awards (the kind in the Stant case) were executive-branch sole-source contracts — those are not published in any clean, machine-readable county feed. That opacity is the finding. There is a lawful path to the full record:

HANDS — Hawaiʻi Awards & Notices Data System (state awards/exemptions): hands.ehawaii.gov
State Procurement Office exemption + sole-source reports (SPO-001 / SPO-007), HAR 3-120 Exhibit A
UIPA request (HRS 92F) for the County’s full sole-source / 103D-102 exemption log with vendors, amounts, and dates — public record. Drop the returned data at reports/mauios/sole_source/ and it joins to donor-watch (contract → donor).

Integrity: a sole-source award is not evidence of wrongdoing. This watch shows where to look — facts and the lawful records path, framed as questions, never accusations.