The past few years have left a blot on the reputation of police departments in this state and, on Oahu, the last several months has proven especially damaging. And in all of the drama, the general public has lacked a voice to raise a protest or demand improvements.

The state Senate may have struck on the most reasonable reform to give them that voice, through an elected official accountable to constituents. This measure should advance for further refinement and deliberation.

Senate Bill 677 proposes to amend the law governing county police chiefs to make it clear that each mayor has the power to fire the chief "for good and just cause, upon approval by the police commission." What’s needed now is a fuller definition of what constitutes such a cause for action.

The Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs, chaired by state Sen. Will Espero, has passed the bill, asserting in its committee report that it "will encourage greater accountability within each of the county police departments and strengthen the public’s trust in law enforcement."

The bill had its genesis in the conflict on Kauai between Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. and Police Chief Darryl Perry, although the more-recent uproar over behavior in the Honolulu Police Department bolsters the arguments for SB 677.

Three years ago Carvalho suspended Perry; the dispute centered on the mayor’s dissatisfaction with inaction on an internal investigation. The commission later ordered Perry back to work, but Carvalho wouldn’t reinstate him. A later court ruling upheld the mayor’s right to have disciplinary authority over the chief as well as other department heads, but that decision is still on appeal.

However, distressing developments also occurred within HPD, which came under fire last fall for its handling of a brawl between a police sergeant and his girlfriend.

Then, Police Chief Louis Kealoha was directly tagged for criticism in his testimony on a family legal dispute that led to a mistrial. That whole case deserved but never got an investigation by the Honolulu Police Commission, which later renewed Kealoha for five years and gave him an "above average" rating.

Much of the discussion underlying these decisions, which the commission defined as personnel matters, went on behind closed doors. Ideally, the police chief should be held to a higher standard of public accountability, with the review process conducted with far greater openness.

Public transparency of police departments has become a national issue, with conflicts over police behavior in Ferguson, Mo., New York City and elsewhere among the most high-profile cases. Clearly there’s politics at play in such matters, as the clash between New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s police demonstrated.

Police commissions are put in place to insulate police governance from the throes of politics, but these panels are prone to complacency and inaction. As appointed boards, commissions are less swayed by politics, but they’re also less responsive to the public.

Some police departments have citizen review boards to improve oversight, and to the extent that they could be populated with the right public-interest advocates, their addition here would be a worthy experiment.

However, SB 677 at least would add the mayor’s voice to any discussion about the mismanagement of the police department, so would represent a step in the right direction. The committee added the requirement that any decision to fire the police would need confirmation by the commission, which would still be the one to hire the chief.

That layer of collaboration helps to moderate the injection of politics into the process. And it does so without stripping out accountability — an essential in the oversight of those in charge of Hawaii’s law enforcement.