The Honolulu Ethics Commission plans today to discuss a long-considered proposal to prohibit city employees from accepting gifts, including cash or alcohol, related to their official duties.

The commissioners will hold a virtual-only meeting this morning in which they will discuss pending city legislation introduced in 2022 by City Council Chair Tommy Waters.

Bill 26, as drafted, would prohibit gifts to the mayor, prosecuting attorney, Council members, city administration officers or any person employed by the City and County of Honolulu, as a means to curb potential conflicts of interest or even prevent public corruption.

The measure follows recent public corruption scandals at city agencies including inside the Honolulu Police Department and the city Department of Planning and Permitting.

As defined in the measure, a gift means any gift, whether in the form of money, goods, service, loan, travel, entertainment, hospitality or a thing “of value, favor, gratuity, commission, or promise in any other form” received by a city employee from anyone doing business with the city.

The prohibited gift-givers would include “lobbyists, vendors, contractors, clients, political committees, tenants, concessionaires, persons with an interest that may be affected by performance or non-performance of the official’s or employee’s official duties, and any individual seeking official action from, or doing business with, the city,” according to a draft of the bill.

“I think Bill 26 is actually going to be a big thing on this agenda because it’s something that the commission has been working on since 2019,” Laurie Wong-Nowinski, the Ethics Commission’s assistant executive director, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser by phone. “That’s when the first public discussions about it happened, and we’re trying to tighten up our gift laws to make it easier for people to understand what can and cannot be accepted.”

For various reasons, she said, the measure has been “sitting” since August 2022, “so we’re trying as hard as we can to get it back on the agenda.”

As part of a public outreach over Bill 26, Ethics Commission Chair David Monk explained the purpose of the city’s anti-gift measure in a Jan. 7 opinion column in the Star-Advertiser.

“The prohibition applies year round, not just during the holidays, and to all city officials and employees, not just opala crews; also, gift cards are like cash, so likewise a no-no,” Monk wrote. “It’s part of a larger set of ethics laws that seek to ensure that public services are free of corruption or even the appearance of corruption.”

He added “local traditions of aloha have sometimes unfortunately justified gift-giving that, even when innocently intended, feeds a perception of reward for special favors or in anticipation of favorable action.”

“With the recent ethics scandals at local, state and federal levels, public skepticism is understandable. That’s why the Ethics Commission’s work is critically important,” Monk wrote. “We much prefer prevention through education and advice to enforcement after a violation is reported, but our investigators and attorneys also work diligently to substantiate or refute reported conflicts of interest, misuse of city resources, and other reported violations,” he wrote.

According to Wong-Nowinski, the commission hopes to see the Honolulu City Council’s Executive Matters and Legal Affairs Committee review Bill 26 at upcoming meetings in either March or April.

In related business, the commission is also expected to discuss the city’s ongoing ethics training program.

According to the commission, the city has conducted mandatory ethics training for nearly 3,080 city employees, out of the organization’s more than 10,000 workers.

“So we deployed it basically in mid-January, and it’s pretty good that we got almost a third of all the city employees trained,” Wong-Nowinski said.

She said the city’s mandatory ethics training “became a legal requirement that we actually implement it and issue mandatory city ethics training. We passed a law, and now the city is in compliance with that law.”

Previously, only city managers, supervisors and city officers had to undergo formal ethics training.

“In 2012 there was a new law that was instituted that required everyone — all city officers, all city employees — to be trained,” she said. “Now it’s the rank and file all the way up to the mayor and Council chair; now they all have to be trained. … So it went from training maybe 1,000 employees to 10,000.”

The city’s ethics training session consists of a 30-minute presentation to individual employees that includes an approximately 20-minute video that the commission created, she said.

“And then after the video they have to take a quiz, and then there’s a short survey afterwards, and it’s every two years,” she added. “And we try to produce a new training video for them every two years because we want to make sure they’re engaged and it’s something that hopefully they look forward to doing as opposed to ‘Oh gosh, ethics training.’”

Wong-Nowinski said a goal of the training is awareness that includes “ensuring that city resources are being used for city purposes.”

For example, she said a groundskeeper employed by the city, who might have access to leaf blowers and lawn mowers, is not allowed to use city-owned equipment for a side business, such as a privately owned landscaping company.

“You can’t use that for your side hustle, for your side job,” she said. “Keep your city job and your city responsibilities separate from your outside work; there can’t be a commingling of city resources.”

In some cases, she said, city employees caught violating city ethics can face penalties.

“So for civil service employees, the commission has the power to recommend disciplinary action to the person’s appointing authority” like a city department, she said. “And that can range anywhere from counseling or an oral reprimand all the way up to termination, depending on the severity of the violation.”

In addition to recommending disciplinary action or removal from office, the commission can impose a civil fine on city officers and elected officials caught violating city ethics. Under city law, such civil fines “shall not exceed the greater of $5,000 or three times the amount of the financial benefit sought or resulting from each violation,” she said.

Today’s commission meeting begins at 11:30 a.m. The meeting is virtual because the Ethics Commission’s offices at 925 Dillingham Blvd. are undergoing renovation.

For more information about the meeting, visit honolulu.gov/ethics. For further information, call 808-768-9242 or email ethics@honolulu.gov.