I agree "small favors" for himself but he was in a position of trust and his position was to serve the public, tax paying interests - not his own. He circumvented the process designed to be fair to all park users. It is akin to someone cutting in line at the firearms registration line because that person knows somebody's uncle's son in HPD.
Imagine if this was pertaining to granting CCWs here in Hawaii? What if only close friends and family of the HPD Chief were granted CCWs and no one else?
Obviously, as evident in resulting replies, we tolerate it here in Hawaii and some feel that a person in such a position is afforded perks. There are moral and ethical implications here, and resounds all the way to the top of our country's leadership. When our top leadership can afford to spend out $$$ on perks that they justify due to position or the "nation's best interest" while the rest of our country is struggling with govt. functions and the like, that sends a negative example down to the the local level; as witnessed in the report I posted. Now this is my opinion and to be fair we heard the media's take on this, but City counsel and the parks director also found him out of line. I think that our present country's generations is harvesting the fruits that previous generations planted w/o considering planting more fruit. I think that WWII resulted in that great generation (100-442 comes to mind) that did the planting for us. i.e. industry, innovation, manufacturing, skilled labor etc.