As part of its new strategic plan, the Honolulu Liquor Commission has hired an outside firm to oversee complaints against the agency, is looking for a new administrator and wants to increase the fees charged to liquor distributors and retailers.

Liquor Commission chairman Dennis Enomoto and acting agency administrator Anna Hirai revealed these details yesterday during a meeting with The Advertiser's editorial board.

The strategic plan is intended to help clean up an agency that has been accused of lax management and rocked by corruption when eight former investigators were convicted of racketeering, bribery and extortion for accepting bribes from owners and workers of hostess bars and strip clubs in 2000 and 2001. Enomoto said the plan spells out a series of reforms to improve administration, make the staff more professional, improve supervision and establish partnerships with the Honolulu Police Department, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other organizations.

The agency has agreed to pay the privately owned Akal Security Co. to handle the agency's 24-hour complaint line, said Enomoto. He said that will cost $16,000 for a four-month trial period. Enomoto said having the complaints go to an independent agency will allow officials to get independent feedback on the public's perception of the agency.

People would be more likely to complain if they know they are not calling the people they are complaining about, Enomoto said. The way he sees it working is that a complaint about a commissioner would then be referred to the mayor's office, while a complaint about illegal activity in a bar might go to both the enforcement investigators and police.

Enomoto said former Honolulu police chief Lee Donohue works at Akal, which he said gives him confidence in the company. Acting administrator Hirai said the commission can ask the company to investigate complaints at its discretion, at an additional fee of $70 an hour.

Enomoto leads the five-member volunteer commission appointed by the mayor to oversee the Liquor Commission. An administrator and staff actually run the county commission, which oversees nearly 1,400 bars, clubs, restaurants and other businesses that sell liquor. It gets its money — $3.7 million in this year's budget — from the operations it licenses and fines paid by those businesses.

The current administrator, attorney Wallace Weatherwax, is on administrative leave through the end of the month after agreeing to step down after the commission stripped him of his duties. The commission had rejected Weatherwax's proposal to provide firearms to investigators.

Enomoto said yesterday that the commission has not made a final decision on whether investigators should carry guns to protect themselves in an increasingly dangerous environment. He said investigators were trained to use batons and pepper spray as part of a wider proposal to standardize procedures, upgrade equipment and improve inspectors' safety. But he said the investigators are not strapping on that safety gear yet either.

While he believes investigators probing underage drinking and other violations do increasingly face drugs, weapons and other dangers in their workplace, he sees some risk to arming them routinely, which could "raise the level of violence" just through the presence of guns. "It hasn't been resolved," Enomoto said.

Enomoto and Hirai also said: