Yesterday’s Star-Bulletin headline storypromised a lot:

Mayor’s backers get big rail jobs

Hannemann defends millions doled out so far to his campaign donors

The problem is that the story failed to deliver much substance beyond a useful list of subcontractors working on the city’s rail project. Most importantly, it doesn’t back up the strong political implication that there are significant questionable aspects to these contributions. We’re told that 19 of 62 subcontractors made poliltical contributions, but this was over three election cycles. We don’t know the total contributed, the average contribution per company, the number of contributions, the amounts per election, or whether there were any apparent links to the selection of subcontractors.

Five companies or individuals with ties to the Hannemann campaign are singled out, but the story doesn’t ever say they made any monetary contributions to the campaign. So what’s the point? Five out of 60 subcontractors are political supporters of the mayor? That doesn’t appear to be a very strong relationship.

Based on data provided, the Star-Bulletin approach could have been quite different: “More than two-thirds of contractors never contributed to the mayor during any election since 2000”

That would have been a very different but equally well supported conclusion. And the Star-Bulletin fails to provide enough information to justify why it felt the Hannemann-contractor-contribution links were worthy of emphasis instead of the contrary “only a minority made any contributions and most were relatively small” conclusion.

I hate to be put in the position of criticizing the Star-Bulletin, because some of my former colleagues will accuse me of being biased against my former employer. But in this case, I think Mayor Hannemann has reason to think he was unfairly treated by the presentation and tenor of this story.

By the way, state law (Section 11-205.5 HRS) does prohibit certain campaign contributions and campaign activities by government contractors, but the law isn’t cited in the story and there was no apparent effort to determine whether the contribution patterns suggested any violations by any of the subcontractors that also made contributions.

This provision was adopted as Act 203 in 2005. It provides:

§11-205.5 Campaign contributions by state and county contractors. (a) It shall be unlawful for the person who enters into any contract with the State, any of its counties, or any department or agency thereof either for the rendition of personal services, the buying of property, or furnishing any material, supplies, or equipment to the State, any of its counties, department or agency thereof, or for selling any land or building to the State, any of its counties, or any department or agency thereof, if payment for the performance of the contract or payment for material, supplies, equipment, land, property, or building is to be made in whole or in part from funds appropriated by the legislative body, at any time between the execution of the contract through the completion of the contract, to:

(1) Directly or indirectly make any contribution or to promise expressly or impliedly to make any contribution to any political party, committee, or candidate or to any person for any political purpose or use; or

(2) Knowingly solicit any contribution from any person for any purpose during any period.

That’s pretty convoluted language.

The bills, HB 1747 (2005), was introduced by Representative Sylvia Luke and Blake Oshiro in a very different form. It was then amended by the House Judiciary Committee to add most of the provisions that eventually passed, and then amended again in the Senate and finally in conference. The resulting bill was a mishmash of unrelated provisions that perhaps predictably led to problems. This was the bill that prompted the Campaign Spending Commission to introduce its controversial legal interpretation on corporate contributions which has caused problems since. And there’s very little mention of the provision relating to government contractors except for a brief comment in the conference report:

(8) Clarifying that the prohibition on contributions by state and county contractors applies to the specific contracting entity and not to individuals associated with the contractor, such as the individual owners of a contracting entity;

In any case, that’s enough on this topic for one morning, especially a weekend morning.

And now a Saturday morning Haiku:

morning blog complete
sudden sense of warmth on leg
cat makes fast escape