A company that just signed a no-bid contract with Honolulu’s motor vehicle office is hoping to send the agency’s director on an all-expenses-paid trip to Gdańsk, Poland next month.
The contractor, Thales Group, has offered to cover the flight, hotel, meals and other related costs — a $5,000 value — for Department of Customer Services Director Kim Hashiro to visit their facility. Gdańsk is an ancient port city and tourist destination on the Baltic Sea known for building ships and as the amber capital of the world.
Hashiro said the journey is necessary because she needs to sign off on the design of the state’s new licenses and ID cards, including aesthetic elements as well as counterfeit and fraud prevention features such as holographic images…