Strengthen conflict-of-interest rules

Former Honolulu City Councilman Nestor Garcia, the target of two investigations by the Honolulu Ethics Commission, recently acknowledged behavior that is wearily familiar: He accepted gifts from lobbyists, and voted on legislation affecting those lobbyists, without disclosing his conflict of interest.

If this is a victory for good government, it’s a hollow one.

While the Ethics Commission’s May 13 advisory opinion found probable cause that Garcia violated city ethics laws, it came to no conclusions; rather, the commission settled with Garcia for a stipulation of wrongdoing and $8,100 in civil fines.

Furthermore, the lobbyists who sought to influence Garcia went unnamed.

“The Commission declines to reveal the identity of the lobbyists in this case because it could cause a chilling effect on witness cooperation for future cases,” the opinion said.

It’s hard to decide which is more disturbing — that the lobbyists were shielded from accountability, or that the commission assumes this sort of illicit behavior by public officials will continue.

Indeed, the commission is looking into allegations by another former Councilman, Romy Cachola, that others accepted free meals and golf games without reporting them, including current Councilmembers Ikaika Anderson and Ann Kobayashi, former Councilman Todd Apo and current state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz. Cachola himself was fined $50,000 by the commission last year for similar behavior.

The commission found that Garcia received $1,764.40 worth of free meals and golf from two lobbyists to discuss matters including “rail transit, transit oriented development, Kapolei growth, pending council issues, City Reapportionment Committee, Special Management Area Use Permits, and City Land Trade.” Garcia failed to disclose his conflicts of interest on 72 bills and resolutions between October 2008 and Jan. 2, 2013. The commission found it an “aggravating circumstance” that this wasn’t the first time Garcia ran afoul of ethics laws. In 2012, he was fined $6,500 after being accused of voting on 52 bills and resolutions without disclosing his conflict of interest arising from his links to the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce, both as a board member and executive director.

It’s discouraging that, in the face of pressure from ethics watchdogs and the public to end this cozy back-scratching, neither politicians nor their special friends appear willing to comply.

In February, the state Ethics Commission fined nine former and current state employees $35,800 for accepting free golf from 26 companies that did business with the state. These activities are so common that the employees, all in positions of authority, seemed surprised that this was a problem.

Perhaps they took their cues from House Speaker Joe Souki, who complained in April that the state commission, through executive director Les Kondo, was enforcing the ethics law beyond “past accepted practices” and demanded that the commission put a stop to it.

Souki said the commission should “come to the Legislature with proposed legislation” to address any concerns over current practices.

Tell the fox how to guard the henhouse? Good luck with that. In fact, the state Ethics Commission proposed a package of nine measures this past legislative session — and all of them failed.

The real problem is not that the ethics laws are too strict or too lenient, but that they are so cavalierly ignored by lobbyists and lawmakers alike. It’s not hard to see why. There’s no meaningful penalty for breaking the rules.

Garcia paid some fines, but his votes, at least for now, still count. The city Ethics Commission believes that based on Hawaii case law, Garcia’s votes are void — possibly changing the result of some Council actions going back several years. The view of the city’s Corporation Counsel is narrower: A vote can be invalidated only after a full review in a court of law. Either way, the public is left to doubt the integrity of the vote.

That needs to change. Lawmakers should remove the ambiguities that encourage this unethical behavior. One way would be to make clearer, through statute and ordinance, circumstances in which a vote cast without proper prior disclosure would be declared null and void. In doing so, the burden of following the rules should be placed where it belongs — on both the politician and the lobbyist seeking the favorable vote.

Also, disclosure requirements for lobbyists and lawmakers should be tightened, to require more detailed and timely public disclosure of specific gifts to specific public officials. Current law allows gifts valued at up to $200 per year from a single source, and disclosure of those gifts is not required.

Of course, it would be best if the public officials who make crucial decisions about Hawaii’s future would simply refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept any gifts or favors from special interests. But that level of integrity appears to be beyond reach.