Gone Surfin’? –
June 27, 2019 – One provision of the previously unpublicized agreement required the rehab to drastically cut the annual pay of executive director Mason Henderson, which had topped out at $500,000, far eclipsing his peers at other Hawaii rehabs. Sand Island agreed to increase the independence and number of board members, impose term limits on them and come up with a plan for Henderson’s succession. Henderson, meanwhile, was supposed to pay back some of the salary the consultant found to be excessive.
In early May, a week after Civil Beat published an investigation of Sand Island that touched on many of the same issues, Attorney General Clare Connors’ department checked in to see if the drug rehab had complied. The answer: Sand Island ignored much of the 2017 agreement until Civil Beat’s story and the attorney general’s follow-up.
