HART's budgets are certainly open to the public and widely discussed at HART board and city council meetings.  The problem is that HART has not been transparent about other issues until forced.  For example, HECO brought up problems with the utilities years ago, but it was only within the last year that we learned about them.  In addition, public testimonies sent to HART are still not posted online.  That's an easy fix that hasn't been made.

As far as controls go, they obviously aren't strong enough.  There have been too many examples of amounts reported in several places to different audiences that don't agree, and there has been no reconciliation between them.

As far as the independent audits go, I wonder how $7.9 million federal funding that was netted with expenses was not picked up by the auditors and fixed on the FY2011 financial statements.  

Considering all of this, I also wonder how much waste and possibly abuse there is.