Off the News: Curbing governor’s emergency powers

If “probably OK with” means “yes, I will approve,” Gov. David Ige will allow a new statute giving Hawaii lawmakers the ability to partly or fully end a governor-declared state of emergency. He should.

The bill now on Ige’s desk arose from dissatisfaction over a slew of laws suspended during the COVID-19 crisis — among them, access to public records — as Ige repeatedly extended 60-day emergency declarations between 2020 and 2022. It allows a governor to re-­declare a state of emergency that has been terminated, but gives legislators, and theoretically their constituents, some say in the matter.