More than a dozen years after the legislature overwhelmingly voted to make the bikeways along state and county roads a priority, the state Department of Transportation has apparently failed to comply with a state law requiring an annual report to the legislature detailing current bikeway expenditures and projects. The reporting requirement dates back to 1995, when legislators threw their support behind bicycles and bikeways as an important alternative mode of transportation despite opposition from DOT administrators.

Now, well over a decade later, no trace of the required annual reports can be found. They don’t appear in the Legislative Reference Bureau’s list of agency reports to the legislature. They aren’t in the Legislative Reference Bureau library, which is a depository for everything submitted to or prepared by the Legislature. The head of the Hawaii Bicycling League can’t recall seeing any reports of this kind. And repeated attempts over six weeks to get an answer from the Department of Transportation through a legislator’s office have ended in frustration, with phone messages not returned, promised responses never received, and amiable but ineffective assistance from DOT’s public affairs office.

As the 2008 legislative session hits its first major deadline this week, when bills have to pass either the House or Senate in order to stay alive for further consideration, the case of the missing bikeways reports is an important reminder that successfully getting a bill passed is only one part of an ongoing political process. What if you pass a law and the people who are supposed to carry it out choose to ignore it?

The reporting requirement was a key part of a House Bill 123, a pro-bike initiative of the 1995 legislature requiring bikeways to be built “wherever practicable”, when roads are being built or reconstructed. When it was introduced with the backing of 34 House members, the bill called for spending at least one percent of the State Highway Fund for state and county bikeways and bike projects. The idea was popular with bicyclists, who turned out to support the bill, which was passed by the transportation committee.

But facing opposition from the Department of Transportation, the Finance Committee amended the bill to turn the one percent funding floor into a ceiling.

Ed Case, then a first-term representative from Manoa and a member of the transportation committee, stood on the House floor to criticize the change and the finance chairman, Rep. Calvin Say, who now serves as Speaker of the House. Mindful of political protocol, Case offered his criticism without directly naming the committee or its chair.

"The bill, as introduced, would have required that no 'less' than one percent of the State Highway Fund revenues be allocated to projects dealing with bikeways, and that's how it exited the Transportation Committee,” Case said, according to House Journal. “The subsequent committee changed the requirement to provide no 'more' than one percent, thus providing an example of how a change of one word can have consequences to a bill."

The bill was further rewritten by a joint House-Senate conference committee, which expressed “overwhelming support” for bikeways but shied away from setting either a minimum or maximum level of funding. Instead, legislators agreed to give the transportation department flexibility to control the pace of bikeway development, but added the requirement of an annual report to the legislature regarding bikeway spending.

“The Legislature reserves the option of revisiting bikeway funding in the event that the Department of Transportation fails to allocate reasonable funding for bikeways,” the conference committee noted.

Case’s final comment during his 1995 floor speech appears remarkably prescient from today’s perspective. After reminding colleagues that directing the DOT to make bikeways a priority, despite the department’s opposition, was well within their legislative prerogative, he said: “I think we do need to be vigilant as we go forward in the event that that important effort lapses."

Case, reached by phone over the weekend, laughed when reminded of his astute advice on the bike bill.

“I’ve been a little ahead of my time several times in my political career,” the former Congressman and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate said.

“This is a theme that runs throughout government,” Case said. “Agencies, whether at the county, state, or federal level, never want to be told what to do. They want complete discretion on how to spend their money.”

Case said there is always a need to balance.

“DOT has a ton of mandates, and that’s always the balance. If you over direct, they can’t get their job done. If you under direct, then we’re not actively and responsibly prioritizing them.”

“Sometimes you have to set the stuff in stone, and if you don’t watch it they slide away from it because they’re not committed,” Case said. “But nobody has really exerted adequate oversight, either in the legislative or executive branch, for as long as I’ve been involved in politics. And without effective oversight, they get impervious to policy direction and to change.”

Last year the Legislature revisited the bikeway question and restored the specific minimum level of funding that had been stripped from the original 1995 bill, requiring 2 percent of eligible federal highway funds, as well as additional state funds, be devoted to bicycle paths, bicycle lanes, and safety measures along bikeways.

The state’s newly appointed bicycle coordinator now says she is finishing an annual report as called for in the 1995 law, but could confirm whether any report had been done previously despite an emailed plea for information sent to other staff in the planning branch of DOT’s Highway Division, which is responsible for bicycle programs.

-Ian Lind (www.iLind.net)