The new year usually comes with assorted late holiday gifts in the form of new laws that take effect on the first day. At least, the public hopes that these will be gifts. The statutes were envisioned as ways to improve life for Hawaii residents in various ways, but sometimes it’s wise to wait and see how things shake out before assessing their success or failure.
A case in point: Lawmakers in February were startled by the filing of federal fraud charges against retired state Sen. J. Kalani English and state Rep. Ty Cullen, then still a sitting House member representing Central Oahu.
Both pleaded guilty to bribery, having accepted cash, hotel stays, casino chips and other inducements in exchange for advancing or canceling legislation on behalf of Milton Choy, a businessman who runs a company providing wastewater services and industrial machinery.
After saying he was “deeply disturbed” by the allegations (both politicians ultimately pleaded guilty), House Speaker Scott Saiki said “the House of Representatives must be above corruption, graft and bribery.” He pledged “to do everything in my power as speaker of the House to rebuild integrity and trust in our legislative process.”
What emerged from the Legislature a few months later fell well short of that goal. The three bills included two (Senate Bill 555 and House Bill 2416) that dealt with campaign finance in some way. Critics rightly point to HB 2416 (now Act 169), which seeks more disclosure of the source of campaign contributions, as not applying broadly enough; only 501(c)(4) nonprofits are covered by the rule, but not limited liability organizations and other business entities.
Still more distressing was the limited effect of SB 555 (Act 283), which prohibits campaign fundraising events during legislative session. But collecting contributions themselves during session was left as an intact route of fundraising.
This misses the whole point of separating the lawmaking process from electioneering. It’s the commingling of the power brokers with their financial backers that leads to bribery and other misdeeds.
There is also House Bill 1475 (Act 165), requiring lawmakers to complete mandatory live or online ethics training every four years. Again, not a bad rule but insufficient to root out the true opportunities for corruption.
On other fronts, there were improvements made, among them:
>> SB 2162 (Act 47), establishing “ranked choice voting” as the means of selecting a candidate in special federal elections and special elections for vacant county council seats. This is a good way to ensure that the winning candidate has the strongest backing, once first- and subsequent choices on the ballot are tallied together.
>> SB 2185 (Act 49) requires county annual reports of fireworks and pyrotechnics records on sales and inventory. Fire officials believe this surveillance could lead to better controls on the use of illegal fireworks. This is far from a foregone conclusion, given failed past efforts at enforcement. But it couldn’t hurt to take the step, especially with the New Year’s blasts still ringing in ears.
>> SB 2279 (Act 88) regulates the purchase of catalytic converters by used-parts dealers and palladium, platinum and rhodium by scrap dealers and recyclers. Everyone who worries about auto break-ins and thefts to capture these lucrative elements for illicit resale should feel some satisfaction about this.
A whole new raft of proposals will load up the legislative hopper in a few short weeks, when the 2023 Legislature convenes — but marking the steps taken, incremental as they are, is one New Year’s tradition.
So is the public directive: Do better this year.
