i L i n d . n e t

Thanks to Senator Les Ihara for calling my attention to SB 1041, which would eliminate public access to the record of certain consumer complaints against filed against businesses.

The bill is scheduled to be heard by the Senate Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection a week from today. Should I comment on how refreshing it is to get that much advance notice, in contrast to the short notice available from most House committees at this point in the session? I probably shouldn’t.

In any case, SB 1041 would block the public from knowing about any complaint that was resolved in the business’ favor, information that is currently available.

Check some of these cases and you quickly see that many complaints are dismissed for “lack of evidence” or similar reasons. That might mean that people with complaints didn’t have the right paperwork, or got busy and couldn’t pursue the complaint further, or got lost in the bureaucratic shuffle, etc. It could also mean that the complaint was off base.

But a pattern of such cases, even if resolved in the favor of the business in some fashion, can signal that there are “issues”. The can, in this way, provide important information to consumers, who don’t have a whole lot of resources at their disposal.

Previous attempts to push this same bill have failed. This one deserves to fail as well.

Two items in the current Honolulu Weekly caught my eye. Managing Editor Adrienne LaFrance’s piece, Dirty Dining, is an interview with Department of Health Sanitation Supervisor Peter Oshiro concerning restaurant inspections.

At one point, Oshiro says:

Our rate of inspection is barely every two years, so they’re just not happening enough to ensure compliance.

Later, he adds:

We are in dire need of staffing and funding. We’d like to get the inspection frequency in the difficult places to at least two to three times a year. Right now we’re doing it just once every two years in some cases, that’s why we have so many problems with routine violations.

What the…!! I don’t like hearing that, on the health department scale, roach infestations or rats in the kitchen aren’t enough of a problem to get excited, since they’ve got bigger things to watch for during their not-frequent-enough restaurant visits.

Then there’s Editor Ragnar Carlson’s little column, The Secret life of bicycles, in which he recounts trying to get sources to discuss Critical Mass, a protest group of bike activists, and other issues about bicycling in Honolulu.

Things weren’t going well, Carlson writes.

Then we found out about Chris Sayers, who is the Bicycling Coordinator for the City & County of Honolulu. We have a bicycling coordinator! Story saved. Sayers sounded like a nice guy who would be happy to talk about bicycling. Which was great, if not totally unexpected, him being bicycling coordinator and all. Except Sayers isn’t actually allowed to talk about bicycling. At least not to us. He said we needed to get permission to talk to him from his department head. We called Sayers’ department head.

He didn’t call us back

Memo to Mayor Mufi: Serving the public means allowing your personnel to do just that when asked. To respond to questions about their area of responsibility. And to do it without having to check with a supervisor or department head. Other cities manage to do it. Why not Honolulu?

By the way, if you haven’t wandered Honolulu Weekly’s web site recently, it’s a joy, far superior to their previous web presence. Check it out.

As predicted, the Office of Information Practices issued fewer opinions in 2008 (just two) than in other year in its 20 year history.

This is just a trivia question. This painting by Lloyd Sexton hangs in the Pacific Club in Honolulu. We’re trying to figure out where it was painted. Where is this scene? The mountain looks a lot like the back side of the Koolau’s in Kahaluu, but there’s no beach that looks like that. So it must be another spot. Anybody recognize it right away?

We saw the painting while having dinner at the Pacific Club last night at the invitation of Allan Renton, Meda’s mother’s first cousin. We don’t run into Allan and his wife as often as we should, so this was an unexpectedly pleasant affair. The excuse for the evening was to meet Cathy Crosslin, whose great-grandmother was the sister of Allan’s mother (if I have the generations right). Turns out that she is a Whitman College graduate, as are Meda and I. So this was a small world experience.

I have to say that the Pacific Club meal service was wonderful. The wine was excellent as was the meal. We thought we were done. Then came the flaming crepes for dessert, made at the table with much flourish. Low calorie? I think not, given all the butter that disappeared into that pan. I hate to think about how much the whole evening cost. Thank you, Allan.