In its frenzy to show concern after the bribery scandal involving state Sen. J. Kalani English and Rep. Ty Cullen, the House named an advisory commission to suggest improvements to the state’s ethics, lobbying and campaign finance laws.
These laws certainly need more teeth and independent enforcers, and the panel’s excellent members, led by retired Judge Daniel Foley, could do much good if they’re willing to make the lawmakers who appointed them uncomfortable.
But there’s something missing from the scope given commissioners — state election laws that unreasonably protect incumbent legislators and foster a corrupt pay-to-play culture.
Voters get blamed for choosing the same legislators election after election, but there’s often little choice.
In 2020, Republicans fielded candidates for only half the 64 House and Senate seats up for election, many fatally unappealing; in the Waikiki House district, the GOP offered a Proud Boys leader who was later arrested in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Few sitting Democratic legislators faced credible challenges in their party’s primary and cruised to reelection.
It’s a rigged system in which incumbents, propped up by the legalized bribery of special-interest campaign donations, are virtually unaccountable.
No wonder entitled legislators act more like lords and masters than public servants, expecting bended-knee supplication from those appearing before them.
Tighter policing of campaign money would help, as would boosting political competition and diminishing party control by adopting California’s open primary elections in which the top two candidates, no matter which party they’re from, run off in the general election.
But the simplest and surest way to periodically flush the system and make way for new voices and fresh ideas is enacting staggered 8-year term limits for state legislators, as Hawaii’s governor, mayors and county council members face without ill effect.
Fixing the time to achieve promised policy goals adds urgency and curtails incentive to pad nests and play it safe in order to build careers.
Stale arguments of sitting legislators that term limits would deprive the public of their experience and continuity have long been discredited.
We see where experience and continuity get us in Congress, where octogenarians and septuagenarians who’ve been there forever produce perpetual gridlock while exchanging childish taunts.
Term limits and better policing of campaign fund bribery could give us something more like Hawaii’s 1978 Constitutional Convention, where delegates who’d mostly never held office passed in a short time 34 amendments that included creating the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, reforming judicial appointments, adding the Intermediate Court of Appeals, giving counties control of property taxes, requiring a balanced state budget and setting term limits for governor and lieutenant governor.
The convention was so effective in making change that lawmakers and their donors who feed off the status quo made sure there hasn’t been another ConCon since.
If legislators are serious about stopping corruption, show it by putting a constitutional amendment for legislative term limits on the ballot and let voters decide.
Next we can have a serious talk about initiative, referendum and recall.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
