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<title>Daily Smile: Wednesday, June 3, 2026</title>

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Daily Smile: Wednesday, June 3, 2026

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Michael Brestovansky

Crime & Courts

A former Hawai‘i County housing official was sentenced Thursday to nearly four years in prison over a scheme that defrauded the county for nearly $11 million.

Alan Scott Rudo, 59, was a housing specialist at the Hawai‘i County Office of Housing and Community Development between 2006 and 2018. During his tenure at the department, Rudo conspired with accomplices to fraudulently award housing development agreements and affordable housing credits to those accomplices’ businesses, pocketing about $1.9 million in bribes and kickbacks.

Through those development agreements, the companies received land valued at about $10.9 million, on which they never built a single unit of housing. The conspirators then sold or transferred the land and the affordable housing credits for a tidy profit.

Rudo was charged in 2022 with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud; he pled guilty that same day. Rudo testified at a 2025 trial of his co-conspirators, and was himself sentenced in U.S. District Court on Thursday.

Judge Jill Otake handed down a sentence of 46 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

In a sentencing statement submitted to the court, Rudo apologized for his actions.

“I betrayed the trust the community placed in me and I caused harm that I can never take back,” Rudo wrote. “I think about that every day and I accept full responsibility for my actions. There is no excuse for the choices I made.”

Rudo wrote the investigation has cost him his marriage, his home and his career, and has forced him to “rebuild [himself] from the ground up.” He said he chose to cooperate with the investigation against his former associates “because it was the right thing to do,” and that he is “committed to doing better.”

His associates — attorney Paul Sulla, 79, of Hilo; attorney Gary Zamber, 56, of Kea‘au; and businessman Rajesh Budhabhatti, 65, formerly of the Big Island — were themselves charged with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and nine counts of honest services wire fraud, and the three were convicted by a federal jury in 2025.

Rudo’s co-conspirators were sentenced earlier this year. Zamber was sentenced to 70 months in prison in January, Budhabhatti was sentenced to 90 months in February and Sulla was sentenced to 60 months in April.

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<title>Former Hawai‘i County housing official sentenced for bribery scheme</title>

Alan Scott Rudo was paid nearly $1.9 million for conspiring to fraudulently award housing development contracts to his associates.

Former Hawai‘i County housing official sentenced for bribery scheme

Government & Politics

The state Department of Education is preparing to implement new cell phone policies at schools statewide.

Starting in the fall semester, all HIDOE schools will be required to meet 

 restricting the use of cell phones by students following a February decision by the state Board of Education.

At minimum, elementary school, middle school and intermediate school students will be prohibited from any cell phone use during school hours. High school students can be allowed to use cell phones during break periods, but schools can choose to implement stricter policies at their own discretion.

Teri Ushijima, HIDOE Assistant Superintendent, told Aloha State Daily that most HIDOE schools already have their own cell phone rules in place, but the new policy standardizes the department’s guidance on the matter.

“The majority of our high schools currently allows high schoolers to use [phones] during their breaks and during lunch,” Ushijima said. “There are maybe a couple that might restrict it … but I think those are schools that tend to be smaller, or they might be K-12 schools, combination schools because they want a single school-wide policy.”

 by HIDOE’s Office of Curriculum Instruction and Design last year, 77% of state high schools have a written phone policy, as do 83% of elementary schools and 97% — all but one — of middle or intermediate schools.

The most common of those policies require students to keep phones off and stowed in backpacks or in dedicated phone holders in the classroom. A majority of schools with written policies also prohibit teachers from allowing cell phone use during lessons.

Ushijima said how the policy is enforced is up to individual schools, which will have to communicate their particular implementation to students and families. Some schools may choose dedicated phone holders or other places to store phones.

A student who defies the cell phone policy will be reprimanded for a first offense. A second offense will lead to the phone being confiscated and the student’s parents notified. Further violations will also have the confiscation, and will require the parents to meet with school administration to retrieve the phone.

If parents need to reach their child during the school day, Ushijima said they should call the school’s office.

“When I went to school, before we took cell phones with us, that was the way parents communicated with their child if they needed to give them information during the school day,” Ushijima said.

Ushijima said HIDOE’s complex area superintendents will check regularly with principals about the policy’s effectiveness and will gauge whether any adjustments to the policy will be necessary for future school years.

The 2025 report by the Office of Curriculum Instruction and Design also noted that students have wildly different opinions about the cell phone policies than teachers or parents.

The majority of students who responded to a survey claimed — perhaps predictably — that cell phone use is not distracting and denied that the cell phone policies make it easier to pay attention. On the other hand, the majority of teachers believe that the policies help learning in the classroom, and the majority of families disagreed with the assertion that cell phones do not contribute to bullying in school.

Daily Smile: Wednesday, June 3, 2026

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Daily Smile: Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Authors

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