The Curious Career of Ford Fuchigami
by Stan Fichtman, Politics Hawaii, August 2, 2026
When the news broke on July 24 that Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke and four others had been indicted in a public corruption case, much of the attention understandably centered on Luke.
But among the other names in the indictment was one that immediately perked the interest of this blogger: Ford Fuchigami. As an aviation person, his name was well known as being part of the State of Hawai‘i Department of Transportation’s Airports Division.
However, relatively little attention was paid to Fuchigami. That struck this blogger as odd. Unlike some of the other names in the indictment, Fuchigami had quietly spent the better part of fifteen years moving through some of the most influential positions in Hawaiʻi government. Yet remarkably little has been written about how he got there.
Let’s first spell out his path, which is circuitous, to say the least
IN 2011, Neil Abercrombie won and became Hawai‘iʻs seventh governor. With his pick of who he wanted to be in influential positions, he recruited Fuchigami to become Deputy Director of Airports. Keep in mind that, before this appointment, there was no record of Fuchigami having held a significant government position at any level.
In research done about his background before government, Fuchigami was involved with a variety of industries: hospitality management, healthcare operations, commercial laundry services (including senior leadership with United Laundry), and general executive management.
Nothing there would suggest that he had any experience in aviation or transportation. Which raises the obvious question: What did Neil Abercrombie see in Ford Fuchigami that caused him to entrust him with one of the state’s largest public enterprises?
There is no definitive answer to that question, yet he was picked, and his first job was that of Deputy Director of Airports.
His job, according to research, included the management of one of the state’s largest and most important infrastructure operations. Keep in mind that the State, and not individual counties in Hawai‘i, runs all the airports across all the islands.
BY THE TIME NEIL ABERCROMBIE was defeated for re-election by Hawaiʻi’s eighth governor, David Ige, Ford Fuchigami had already climbed the ranks of the Department of Transportation. In just four years, he had gone from Deputy Director of Airports to Interim Director, and then Director of Transportation.
And with the eventual win of David Ige in November 2014, that should have been the end of the story. With a new governor coming in, they usually bring in their own people. The old team packs its boxes and heads home.
However, not for Fuchigami. What happened instead was something approaching a bidding war for his talents.
The bidding started in October 2014 when Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell announced that he had selected Fuchigami to become Director of the City’s Department of Enterprise Services. It looked as though Fuchigami’s career in state government had come to an end and he was moving across the street to Honolulu Hale.
Except it hadn’t.
Before Fuchigami could even make the move to the City, now Governor-elect Ige stepped in and announced that he wanted him to stay right where he was—as Director of Transportation. Caldwell publicly supported the decision, calling Fuchigami “a hard worker and a man of great integrity.” With Ige’s announcement, the competition was over, and Fuchigami stayed right where he was.
Only four years earlier, Fuchigami had walked into state government as someone with no established government résumé. Now, both the incoming governor and the mayor of Honolulu wanted him on their team.
It is perhaps the clearest demonstration of just how quickly Fuchigami’s stock had risen within Hawaiʻi government. In a remarkably short period of time, he had gone from being a newcomer to someone actively sought after at multiple levels of government. And, as it would turn out, his climb through Hawaiʻi government was only beginning.
Three years later, in 2017, Ige brought him directly into the Governor’s Office. As Administrative Director, Fuchigami became the liaison between the governor, department heads, and outside interests, while handling management initiatives and representing the administration before lawmakers.
In January 2019, Ige added another title: Chief of Staff. It didn't last long – only a few months before Ige would replace him with Linda Chu Takayama as his permanent Chief of Staff.
And then it was back to Airports – this time as the head of the Administrative Services Office. The Administrative Services Office serves as the central hub for fiscal and procurement matters, including department budget and fiscal regulatory alignment. Again, it was a position that required a deft administrative hand, which Fuchigami had definitely grown into by the time the saga got to 2022.
But there is one more stop along the way that is worth mentioning.
When Fuchigami returned to the Airports Division in 2019, his responsibilities did not end there. Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell tapped him to serve on the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) Board, one of the most politically visible and consequential boards in the state. It wasn’t the first time Fuchigami had served there—he had previously been a member by virtue of serving as Director of Transportation—but this time Caldwell selected him as one of the mayor’s own appointees.
By the time the next chapter of his curious career began, Ford Fuchigami had become a sought-after administrator at both the county and state levels of government. His rise had been steady, and each move seemed to bring greater responsibility and influence.
But it would be this next chapter—his move to the Legislature—that would ultimately alter the trajectory of his career in ways that continue to play out today.
TO UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FUCHIGAMIʻS NEXT MOVE, which occurred in January, 2022, one first has to understand the Senate Committee on Ways and Means — better known around the Capitol simply as WAM.
For people outside of government, a legislative committee assignment may not sound particularly remarkable. WAM in Hawai‘i is vastly different. It is one of the places where decisions are made on what the State is going to spend money on. Bills that require state funding frequently have to pass through WAM, while the committee also plays a central role in shaping the state budget and capital improvement program.
In other words, policy ideas may begin somewhere else in the Legislature, but if they require money, sooner or later the question becomes whether the people controlling the purse strings are willing to pay for them.
This is where Fuchigami next landed.
His role at WAM, as introduced by its chair – Senator Donovan Dela Cruz – was as part of a team of budget analyst staff. Later on, Dela Cruz would describe him as a WAM budget adviser. Outside of being an elected official in WAM, the role that Fuchigami held there was about as close to one of the centers of fiscal decision-making in Hawai‘i government as a non-elected official can get. Everything from executive budgeting, transportation, airport finances, procurement, capital projects, and the internal workings of the Ige administration – Fuchigami had at least knowledge of it.
Once again, Fuchigami found himself operating near the center of where Hawaiʻi’s largest fiscal decisions were made.
By then, though Fuchigami was not a bit player in Hawai‘iʻs political landscape, by 2022 he had spent more than a decade inside it. He had run the Department of Transportation, overseen Airports, served as Administrative Director in the Governor’s Office and, briefly, as Gov. David Ige’s Chief of Staff. He had worked with department heads, dealt with the Legislature, understood executive budgets and knew firsthand how decisions made at the Capitol translated into action inside state agencies.
So his knowledge, with proximity to the key decision makers that make big decisions in Hawai‘i, and one can surmise that Fuchigami by this time had reached a career high.
BUT THEN CAME JANUARY 30, 2022.
If January 2022 represented another step upward in Fuchigami’s remarkable government career, January 30 may ultimately be remembered as the day that trajectory changed.
That day, according to prosecutors, Tobi Solidum wrote Ford Fuchigami a check for $7,000.
The amount itself almost seems incongruous with the résumé of the man receiving it. Fuchigami had operated around state budgets measured in billions, overseen major transportation operations and worked at the highest levels of the executive branch. Now he was sitting inside Senate Ways and Means.
Yet prosecutors allege that a $7,000 payment would become part of the evidence tying him to an alleged corruption scheme that has changed the trajectory of a number of political figures in Hawai‘I over a relatively short period of time.
The charges that Fuchigami faces because of this are outlined in both other media reports as well as in copies of the July 24th indictment.
But at that time, on that date and the significance of that action – taking a check and then cashing it – nothing much happened, and definitely nothing to impede his status inside the halls of power in the State of Hawai‘i.
Fuchigami would continue to serve at the Legislature, at WAM for at least that legislative period – 2022, and was identified in the Senate journals as a staffer in the 2023 session. And on May 5, 2023, one day after sine die of the 2023 Legislature on the 4th, Governor Josh Green again picked up Fuchigami and reinstated him at the Department of Transportation, Airports Division, as its Deputy Director.
And once again, Fuchigami was on the move, this time back to the John Rodgers Terminal complex at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.
ON MONDAY, JULY 27, the Hawai‘i Department of Transportation announced that the department was placing Fuchigami on paid administrative leave for 30 days, effective that day.
The department stated the move would allow the department to evaluate the situation.
On Thursday the 30th, he, along with the other co-defendants, appeared in court to plead not guilty to the charges levied on them. It is not lost on this blogger that, already, there are a number of legal voices out there that are questioning whether the charges are really going to stick or not.
DURING THE COURSE of researching this article, this blogger kept coming back to the same question. Not whether Ford Fuchigami is guilty or innocent—that will be decided in court—but who exactly Ford Fuchigami is.
For fifteen years he quietly occupied some of the most influential administrative positions in Hawaiʻi government while attracting remarkably little public attention. Now, because of one indictment, everyone suddenly knows his name.
Ironically, after all of those years, the public may know less about the man than about the allegations against him.
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Research Note
This article was prepared using publicly available government records, legislative journals, court filings, official press releases, and contemporaneous news reporting. Analysis and conclusions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
Sources
Government Records & Official Documents
Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation. Official Statement: State of Hawaiʻi Airport System Revenue Bonds, Series 2015A and 2015B. Honolulu: State of Hawaiʻi, 2015. Biography of Ford Fuchigami documenting his private-sector career, including management positions with Sheraton Hotels & Resorts and United Laundry Service prior to entering state government. Accessed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation. “New Transportation Deputy Directors Appointed for Airports and Highways Divisions.” Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, December 29, 2014.
Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation. “HDOT Leadership Team Finalized.” Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, May 5, 2023.
Hawaiʻi State Senate. Senate Journal, 2022 Regular Session. Committee records and staff listings.
Hawaiʻi State Senate. Senate Journal, 2023 Regular Session. Committee records and staff listings.
Office of Governor David Ige. Archived press releases announcing Ford Fuchigami’s appointments as Director of Transportation (2014), Administrative Director (2017), and Chief of Staff (2019).
United States District Court for the District of Hawaiʻi. United States v. Sylvia Luke, et al. Federal Indictment, filed July 24, 2026.
News & Background Sources
Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “Fuchigami Leaving DOT for City Post.” October 14, 2014.
Hawaiʻi News Now. “Ige Appoints Ford Fuchigami as Head of DOT.” November 19, 2014.
Honolulu Civil Beat. “HART Has a New Board Member: Ford Fuchigami.” July 19, 2019.