Early risers might have noticed that yesterday’s post about SB893 and the Marvin Dang saga went through a quick but substantial revision.

Here’s the story of what led to up to the revision.

The story started when I noticed this item at the top of the Ethics Commission website:

> Commission resolves investigation re legislative testimony by working group member; member pays $1,000 NEW

That was a surprise, since I didn’t recall seeing anything about this in the news.

The link led to a redacted, public version of Advisory Opinion 2012-2 with a date of September 28, 2012.

As I explained in the original post, it appeared Dang had already made a $1,000 payment to resolve the matter prior to September 28.

The footnote read:

The Hawaii State Ethics Commission and the Working Group member have agreed to resolve any further action by the Commission relating to the member’s lobbying activities while a member of the Working Group described herein. As part of that resolution, the member has paid $1,000 to the State of Hawaii General Fund.

As a result, I initially concluded the deal had been struck and the payment made last year, well before the theatrics that unfolded during the 2013 legislative session. My first version of the tale was based on this understanding.

After posting that first version, I noted several things.

First, although the published version of the advisory opinion appears to have been signed by four commission members last September, the fine print in footnotes indicated it was much more complicated.

Chairperson Maria J. Sullivan recused herself from this matter. There also was a vacancy on the Commission when this Advisory Opinion was issued.

Commissioner Les Knudsen participated in the Commission’s issuance of the Advisory Opinion to the former Working Group member. Commissioner Knudsen left from the Commission effective December 1,2012, and he did not participate in the Commission’s consideration and approval of this summary of the Advisory Opinion.

Commissioner Edward Broglio did not participate in the Commission’s issuance of the Advisory Opinion. Commissioner Broglio participated in the Commission’s consideration and approval of this summary of the Advisory Opinion.

Confusing, yes, but still informative.

The footnotes show the commission’s approvals came in two stages. At least a draft of the advisory opinion was approved back in September 2012, but the action was not finalized for some reason. Final approval of the redacted, public version of the opinion did not come until after the appointment of Ed Broglio to fill a commission vacancy. A February 26, 2013 press release posted on the commission website announced Broglio’s appointment, so final agreement came sometime after that date.

I looked further, and that’s when I did an online search of court records and discovered the commission had gone to court in November 2012 to enforce a subpoena seeking Dang’s direct testimony.

The court index shows there were several motions filed over the next six months as Dang’s attorney continued efforts to block the subpoena.

None of this would have been happening if Dang had reached an agreement and made that $1,000 payment back in September.

The problem in reporting this, of course, is that the commission’s proceedings at this stage are confidential, and the court record had been sealed at Dang’s request.

I later heard a bit about the political dynamics. SB893 was introduced by Sen. Clayton Hee and had a single referral to the Committee on Judiciary and Labor, which Hee chairs.

It then passed the Senate as amended by Hee’s committee, but died in the House.

But Hee reportedly kept up the pressure, pushing the House to revive the measure by inserting its language into another bill, and threatening to kill other House-backed measures by letting them die without hearings or blocking them in conference if he didn’t get his way.

I’m told key House leaders did not want to pass SB893, perhaps convinced it would be bad policy to pass an ethics exemption to benefit a single individual. But they also wanted to placate Hee in some way in order to prevent their other bills from being caught in the crossfire. One option was to get the ethics commission to back off and simply deep-six its advisory opinion and forget any further action, thereby making the whole issue go away. Several attempts were apparently made to push the commission in that direction as the legislative session raced towards a conclusion.

The political pressure failed to move the commission, as evidenced by the eventual agreement, payment by Dang, and publication of the redacted advisory opinion sometime around mid-to-late April, just prior to the end of the session.

As I concluded yesterday, there’s quite a tale here waiting to be fully reported.