Government needs to shine a brighter light on the public’s business

Sunshine please! We may take sunshine for granted here in Hawaii most of the time, but when the sun finally reemerges after weeks behind the clouds, one might pause, just for a moment, to appreciate just how wonderful it is and how lost we’d be without it.

March 11-17 is Sunshine Week nationally, and the "sunshine" celebrated this week — public access to our government — can never be taken for granted. In 2012 alone, we’ve seen some cloudy bills before the state Legislature that would:

» Exempt county council meetings from the Sunshine law (House Bill 2742);

» Remove some public agency board discussions from board meetings with announced agendas (Senate Bill 2859);

» Decentralize access to published notices of public meetings (SB 2234);

» Examine — without public representation on the task force doing the examination — the possibility of restricting public access to complaints regarding licensed professionals (HB 2298);

» Make information regarding licensee complaint investigation private (HB 2003);

» Create exceptions to the gifts law making undue influence more likely (HB 2457);

» Freeze funding for public, education, and government cable television (HB 2874).

Fortunately, our legislators and members of the public recognized the problems in a number of those bills, and in some cases the clouds retreated.

There have also been some very sunny bills before the Legislature this year that, unfortunately, have not progressed. One bill would have helped ensure the viability and relevance of the Big Island pilot program for a public funding option for elections (HB 2700) — an option that offers hope for real democracy liberated from special interest cash. Two other bills would have increased the scope and frequency of lobbyist disclosures and required legislators to file their financial disclosures at the beginning, rather than at the end, of the legislative session (HB 637, SB 2954).

Some important sunny 2012 bills are still alive. One would require that any board minutes be posted online (HB 2404); others would improve reporting for campaign spending — critical in the age of the 2010 Citizen’s United decision and other decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court that have removed restrictions on campaign spending by artificial "persons" (HB 2174, SB 2493/HB 1756).

The goal of sunshine with respect to public agency meetings in our state government is articulated pretty well at the first section of Hawaii’s Sunshine Law (Hawaii Revised Statues Chapter 92): "In a democracy, the people are vested with the ultimate decision-making power. Governmental agencies exist to aid the people in the formation and conduct of public policy. Opening up the governmental processes to public scrutiny and participation is the only viable and reasonable method of protecting the public’s interest."

But it’s often challenging to let the sun in, whether to meetings or records. The state Legislature is exempt from the open meeting requirements of Hawaii’s Sunshine Law, and access to public agency records under Hawaii’s Uniform Information Practices Act can be uncertain, even after appeal. The Star-Advertiser had to resort to a lawsuit in 2011 to access the names of judicial nominees. And when a state agency quotes a prohibitive amount to provide requested records, as when a University of Hawaii office requested nearly $40,000 for three years of legal invoices in 2011, sunshine is effectively denied.

And at the federal level, according to the 2010 Knight Open Government Survey, only 13 of 90 agencies had made concrete changes in their Freedom of Information Act procedures one year after a memorandum issued to all federal agencies by President Barack Obama on his first day in office in January 2009 ordering "a new era of open government." And in 2011, one year later, only 24 of the 90 federal agencies had made the changes.