Hawaii tax director accused of creating ‘hostile’ work environment

Six state Tax Department employees — including the department’s human resources officer — allege that Tax Director Gary Suganuma has created an abusive and hostile work environment over issues that have nothing to do with assisting island taxpayers or ensuring that the state collects what it’s due. Min Meng, 52, — the department’s administrative services officer and a former human resources specialist for the department — has asked Gov. Josh Green and state legislators to launch an “independent investigation” of Suganuma, who was nominated by Green in January 2023 to become tax director and was confirmed by the state Senate in May 2023. “I have nothing personal against Director Suganuma, but he’s trying to destroy careers and lives,” Meng, who has been at the department for eight years, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “It’s a very sad situation. This is my last resort. We are counting on the system working. All we ask for is a safe and non-bullying work environment.” In a statement, Green’s office said, “The Office of the Governor is reviewing the submittal and generally does not comment on personnel matters.” Suganuma told the Star-Advertiser that he also cannot comment on personnel matters. Meng cc’d Suganuma on his request to Green and state legislators for an investigation, but said Suganuma has not discussed it with him. Four of Meng’s colleagues and another manager who left the more than 400-position Tax Department, agreed to be identified by name in the Star-Advertiser. The managers allege that Suganuma regularly berates Meng, along with them and others in manager meetings — and in front of other Tax Department employees. They say that some managers and rank-and-file employees have reported that they suffer stress-related issues because of the degree to which Suganuma yells and waves his finger in their faces. According to Meng, seven Tax Department “top managers” have left in less than three years since Suganuma took over. The managers who said they have witnessed Suganuma’s interactions with Meng corroborate Meng’s allegations — and told the Star-Advertiser that they have received similar treatment. Tense interactions Denise Inouye — the former Tax Department’s administrative rules officer and a multiple winner of the department’s employee of the quarter award — said Suganuma told her after he took over the department that her annual contract would not be extended past June 30, 2023, after 30 years with the department. Suganuma, Inouye said, would not allow her to take a demotion back to her old job as supervising income tax specialist to stay in the department — with a pay cut — or to retire. “I was in manager meetings and from the beginning (Suganuma) would cut me off,” Inouye said. “He would ask questions and I would start to answer and he literally would cut me off and ask someone else, so the writing was on the wall from the beginning. He was treating me like that from the first day, saying I wasn’t qualified because I wasn’t an attorney and shouldn’t be in that position. “I had gone through 10 previous directors who felt I was qualified,” Inouye said. A week after his Senate confirmation in May 2023, Inouye said she received a letter “informing me that they no longer needed my services.” Inouye left on May 30, 2023, and was treated for work-related stress, she said. “He didn’t allow me to retire from my position,” Inouye said. “I’m 63 now, so I was eligible. It would have been nice to have closure.” Others who remain at the Tax Department also have reported stress-related symptoms to the human resources department. Dean Arashiro, a Tax Department human resources specialist, said that federal privacy laws “prevent me from disclosing any medical diagnoses but, yeah, I do know of people who were affected that way.” Arashiro and the other co-workers say Meng continuously receives the brunt of Suganuma’s criticisms, but that Meng does not argue with Suganuma, at least in front of them. “Because of his HR background, he’s very fair and knows how to document everything … in a way that’s accurate,” Inouye said of Meng. Arashiro said he also was criticized by Suganuma, after being assigned earlier this year to a six-employee committee that included Meng to review parking assignments for employees who work in the Punchbowl Street headquarters. The review was prompted by an employee checking on her request to be assigned parking closer to the building. It took the committee six months to conclude that the employee was ineligible “to receive her desired parking,” according to a statement signed by Virginia Kemmerlin — the Tax Department’s current human resources officer — that was included in Meng’s request for an investigation. Arashiro said Suganuma chaired the parking review committee, but that no other state tax director that he served under had ever gotten directly involved in employee parking issues. Meng and some of his co-workers also say that Suganuma ordered another time-consuming review of how many Punchbowl Street employees have keys allowing them access on weekends and nights to finish their work after hours. Kemmerlin, who worked in human resources for the much larger state Department of Corrections for 30 years, wrote that her current position in the Tax Department “is severely impacting my physical and mental health. … The HR issues in Corrections far exceed the complexity of cases at DOTAX, and yet I am constantly questioned, accused and treated like I am lying and/or mishandling by Director Suganuma.” Kemmerlin has filed her own complaints about how she said she was treated by corrections officials. She’s only worked at the Tax Department since January, reporting directly to Meng, and said “I’m shocked that a number of employees have requested meetings with me about their own work situation.” In her statement, Kemmerlin wrote that early on “Director Suganuma tried to recruit me as his ‘snitch’ to help him fire MM (Min Meng). After I refused, he then placed me in his target group and has created a very hostile, discriminatory and toxic work environment for me and my staff. … He also asked me to ‘keep an eye on MM’ and report directly to him about ‘everything going on around MM.’ I was shocked but kindly declined Director Suganuma and stated that I believed in the chain of command and would inform MM if I ever met with Director Suganuma about anything.” Kemmerlin wrote in her statement that Suganuma “always gets personal about business, when someone presents a different opinion, he gets mad right away and feels that the person is challenging and undermining him and his authority. When he gets angry, which occurs very often, he has a hard time in controlling himself, yelling, cursing, swearing, finger-pointing, accusing, etc., and it has created a very hostile and toxic work environment.” Hiring practices Meng and his co-workers also allege that Suganuma violated multiple state hiring practices and state human resources policies, including failing to properly advertise and recruit candidates and instead hired two inexperienced loyalists to serve as his aides. Arashiro, the human resource specialist, and some of his co-workers alleged that the new employees were given false job titles they never performed to justify them receiving salaries $6,000 higher than what employees in similar positions were earning at the time, Arashiro said. Another of Suganuma’s hires was assigned a desk inside the Tax Department’s human resources office even though his job did not include human resources responsibilities, Kemmerlin said. Suganuma also ordered his new aide to be granted access to personnel records, which Kemmerlin said caused her to object that it was improper to allow a non-human resources employee access to confidential health records in violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, more commonly known as HIPAA. She said Suganuma later reassigned the employee to a desk outside of the human resources department after the state Department of Human Resources Development supported her position. Suganuma also had video cameras installed throughout the department, including in the human resources department’s lobby while telling employees that he had “eyes and ears everywhere,” further damaging morale because everyone entering and exiting the HR department knew they were being recorded, Kemmerlin said. Kemmerlin recommended that the department consult with the Hawaii Government Employees Association because the union had concerns “since it was a change in work conditions, and (Suganuma) refused to conduct such consultation stating that the act would be an admission that we were doing something wrong,” she wrote in her statement. Employee performance Meng was selected the Tax Department’s manager of the year in 2024 by a committee chaired by Arashiro that also had responsibility for selecting the department’s 2024 employee of the year and team of the year. After Meng received the highest score for manager of the year, Arashiro says that Suganuma reconfigured the committee to include some of his loyalists, who lowered Meng’s scores and selected a different manager of the year. Kemmerlin chaired this year’s selection committee that also recommended Meng for manager of the year and says the same thing happened. Suganuma, Kemmerlin wrote in her statement, made it clear “that only his desired candidates could be selected and by all means MM could not be selected although MM got the most nominations with the strongest justification.” In June, Suganuma also improperly tried to lower the score of Meng’s annual performance evaluation from “fully meets expectations” to “less than meets expectations,” Kemmerlin told the Star--Advertiser. Kemmerlin said she consulted with the Department of Human Resources Development again over whether Suganuma could downgrade Meng’s ratings over his “expectations” because Meng had been given “no expectations” before his annual evaluation period began, Kemmerlin said. In her statement, she wrote that she told Suganuma that DHRD confirmed her concerns. According to Kemmerlin’s statement, Suganuma then “angrily stated ‘that’s (expletive) (expletive).’” ‘I hear the chatter’ Other Tax Department nonmanagement employees like Brenda Singson, a tax department secretary and Meng’s administrative assistant, said that Suganuma’s “abusive and unprofessional behavior actually affected me because I also felt harassed. For somebody (Suganuma) at that level, it’s unbecoming and not professional.” Emill Acosta, an accountant who has worked for the Tax Department for 15 years, said he has not experienced any mistreatment but his co-workers talk regularly about how morale has gotten worse under Suganuma, leading some of them to also report stress-related issues. “I hear the chatter,” Acosta said. “I try to stay out of it, but you can’t help but hear it.” The Tax Department employees who were willing to be identified by name in the Star-Advertiser said they hope that speaking out publicly will provide protection from retaliation and lead to reforms. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I was retaliated against,” said Arashiro, the human resources specialist. “If he retaliates, it’s going to look even worse, given everything that’s happened already.”