Hawai‘i’s new acting Lieutenant Governor says his chief priority is simply ensuring the office continues to run.
Keith Regan, state comptroller and director of the Department of Accounting and General Services, was tapped by Gov. Josh Green to fill in for Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke after she announced she would take an indefinite unpaid leave of absence last month.
But despite being unexpectedly lifted to the state’s No. 2 office without a single vote, Regan told Aloha State Daily that he sees his new position as an extension of his duties as a public servant.
“I have no political aspirations,” Regan said during an interview Monday. “I’m purely serving in this role as a public servant.”
Regan, who Green appointed as comptroller in 2022, said he understood when he took that job that there was always an outside possibility that he would need to take over the lieutenant governor position — the comptroller position is fifth in the line of succession for that role, behind the Senate president, the House speaker, the attorney general and the director of the state Department of Budget and Finance.
Nonetheless, when Luke made her announcement, Regan said he didn’t expect Green to call him about taking over her role days later.
“When the governor called me in on that Thursday morning to talk about what was transpiring, it was a conversation that — although I wasn’t prepared or expected it to happen — I understood where it was coming from,” Regan said. “And I understood my responsibilities as comptroller and what I would need to do to be able support Lt. Gov. Luke, her team, as well as the governor and the state of Hawai‘i.”
Since then, Regan said he has been acclimatizing to his new role and familiarizing himself with the duties of the office and the ongoing initiatives Luke had been spearheading, such as her “Connect Kākou” high-speed internet project.
“What I’m trying to do is understand how I can help support this [project] and then, at the same time, understand which department could be taking a greater lead in these initiatives so that they could get the support that’s needed,” Regan said.
The critical work, Regan said, is ensuring that the hundreds of documents that pass through the lieutenant governor’s office each week — such as authentication requests for new birth, marriage or death certificates, or name changes — continue through the office with no delay. In addition, he said he also needs to sign off on all new administrative rules adopted by state departments.
Regan said his experience as comptroller, and, before that, his time as the managing director for Maui County, where he lived from childhood until 2019, lends itself well to the lieutenant governor’s office. Both positions, he said, require his attention on a broad range of departmental divisions: at DAGS, he supervises eight divisions within the department, and in Maui he worked with nearly 20 different county departments.
“We do everything from accounting and auditing all the way through to enterprise IT and building new facilities, renovating facilities, handling fleet management, all of our parking garages that are under our control,” Regan said. “So it’s a very broad level of responsibility in the department, which I think helps me by putting me in that mindset and being prepared to take on other challenges, should they present themselves.”
At the same time, Regan must also keep up with DAGS’ work. While Deputy Comptroller Meoh-Leng Silliman has been temporarily elevated to Acting Comptroller during Luke’s leave of absence, Regan remains in the state comptroller role; with no pay increase, he added.
“It’s kind of like they got a two-for-one deal,” Regan joked.
Regan said his workdays begin at about 6 a.m., and he spends the first two or three hours at DAGS, reviewing and signing documents and providing guidance as needed, and then heading to the Capitol to do lieutenant governor work. Nonetheless, he said he still checks in on DAGS throughout the day.
While Regan said his workdays ostensibly end at 4:30 or 5 p.m., he added that even at home he often spends a few hours following up on emails and other work. The legislative session, which ends this week, is a particularly busy time, he said, requiring him to review and sign off on a lot of testimony for the lieutenant governor’s office, which is work that typically can’t wait.
“It’s just something that’s absolutely necessary, and it’s my commitment as a public servant to do these things, and that’s why we sign up for these jobs, right?” Regan said.
While it isn’t clear how long Regan will remain acting lieutenant governor — and he added that he can’t sustain his current pace of work indefinitely — he said he intends to “do the best job that [he] possibly can,” whether it’s just for another week, or until the end of Luke’s term.
And after that, if Green, or whoever becomes governor following this year’s election, asks him to continue as comptroller, Regan said he would be “honored” to do so.
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