The House Committee on Consumer Protection and Commerce will consider a bill tomorrow (Wednesday) morning that would reduce access to information about complaints lodged against busineses and licensed professionals. HB 1359 is a companion bill to SB 1041, mentioned here earlier.

SB 1041 will be heard on Friday in the Senate at 8:30 a.m.

The bill would prohibit disclosure of information by the Office of Consumer Protection about complaints “that have been investigated and resolved by the office in favor of the person against whom the complaint was filed.”

It’s a bill that surfaces every year or two and has been rejected by past legislatures on several occasions.

Backers of the bill say that businesses shouldn’t have their reputations tarred by frivolous complaints.

I can sympathize with that sentiment. But consumers have precious few resources when trying to evaluate competing businesses or professionals. Information about complaints, while not the whole story, are certainly an important piece of the picture.

The problem with this bill is that cases are “resolved in favor of the person against whom the complaint was filed” for many different reasons. Often the complaining party is just exhausted by the state bureaucracy and gives up. Sometimes it takes so long for the state to act that the complainant has moved on. Sometimes consumers don’t have the paperwork, don’t have proper evidence, etc.

When information about complaints is made public, in includes information about the outcome. When a complaint is not upheld by the Office of Consumer Protection, that information is prominently displayed.

But a pattern of complaints can provide useful information to consumers. To further reduce consumers ability to protect themselves would be a disservice to the public.

The hearing notice for tomorrow’s CPC hearing contains instructions for submitting testimony, which can be emailed or faxed. Similar testimony can be sent to the Senate Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection on SB 1041.

I received a letter yesterday from Paul Tsukiyama, director of the Office of Information Practices, and I really don’t know whether it’s is good news or bad news. He was responding to my comment on Friday that OIP “issued fewer opinions in 2008 (just two) than in other year in its 20 year history.”

The statement was based on the list of opinions available on the agency’s web site. Only two opinions were listed there during calendar year 2008.

However, Tsukiyama says his office actually authored 45 written opinions during 2008, up from a total of 39 the previous year.

He says the difference is accounted for by 43 “informal” or memorandum opinions which are neither published nor circulated.

These opinions are deemed to be of more limited guidance because they address issues that have already been more fully addressed in formal opinions, or because their factual basis limits their general applicability. These opinions enerally provide elss detailed legal discussion.

Tsukiyama says that “in the face of diminishing resources” to deal with its longstanding backlog,

OIP has elected to address more cases by way of informal (unpublished) opinions, summary dispositions, and by written and verbal corresponence as opposed to formal published opinions.

During 2008, only 4.4 percent of OIP’s written opinions were published, while 95.6 percent fell in that information and unpublished category.

The move certainly makes it a bit easier for the agency, which has struggled with declining budgets for at least the last decade.

Those budget cuts continue. Gov. Lingle’s pending budget proposes to cut non-personnel costs of OIP from $44,936 in fiscal year 2007-2008 to just $20,234 per year in FY 2009-2011. Given the demands on the office and the continuing problems in getting state agencies to comply with the public records and sunshine laws, this is clearly inadequate.

But I’m not convinced that simply cutting off the flow of formal opinions is a positive thing from the public’s perspective.

I couldn’t help but notice that the captain of the Navy guided missile cruiser that ran aground outside Pearl Harbor was quickly relieved of his command. That probably wasn’t a surprise. But wouldn’t it be refreshing if public officials in state and local government who run their offices aground got the same timely heave-ho? Isn’t that what we really mean by accountability?