There’s an interesting story by Diana Leone in today’s Honolulu Advertiser describing ongoing efforts to make more Kauai County documents available online.

Meanwhile, although Honolulu has had a robust online delivery system for some time, there are still issues to be dealt with in the transition from paper to online access, since the law was written before the Internet and the capacity for instant online access.

For example, I received an inquiry yesterday concerning the meeting notice for Thursday’s meeting of the Honolulu City Council Planning Committee.

The notice was apparently not posted in the city system and available to the public until yesterday (Monday) morning.

Is that sufficient to meet the legal requirement of a minimum of six days notice?

The applicable state law is found in Section 92-7 HRS, which provides, in part:

§92-7 Notice. (a) The board shall give written public notice of any regular, special, or rescheduled meeting, or any executive meeting when anticipated in advance. The notice shall include an agenda which lists all of the items to be considered at the forthcoming meeting, the date, time, and place of the meeting, and in the case of an executive meeting the purpose shall be stated.

(b) The board shall file the notice in the office of the lieutenant governor or the appropriate county clerk’s office, and in the board’s office for public inspection, at least six calendar days before the meeting. The notice shall also be posted at the site of the meeting whenever feasible.

(…and…)

(e) The board shall maintain a list of names and addresses of persons who request notification of meetings and shall mail a copy of the notice to such persons at their last recorded address no later than the time the agenda is filed under subsection (b).

So it appears that to comply with the law, the council meeting notice only has to be filed with the City Clerk, not necessarily available to the public, six days in advance of the scheduled meeting. That would have been last Friday.

But there’s a fudge factor.

In a 2006 opinion, the Office of Information Practices said it is legal for the meeting notice to be filed with the clerk’s office “after normal business hours on the sixth day prior to the meeting”.

In the case of the Honolulu City Council, this means that the notice can legally be filed after hours, assuring that it will not be publicly available, either online or posted at City Hall, until Monday morning.

Keep in mind that when this provision became law, the public learned about meetings either by physically appearing at City Hall and checking the bulletin boards where printed notices are posted, or by requesting that notices be mailed.

In either case, it was unlikely that the public would get the full six days notice. It seems likely that six days were required to effectively assure 48-hour notice, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that there is some slippage in the system.

It does seem to me, though, that the requirement for mailing of notices does pose a problem for the council.

It provides that “the board”, in this case the Planning Committee, is responsible for mailing meeting notices to those who have requested notification. That responsibility is not shifted over to the clerk.

And notices are to be mailed “no later than the time the agenda is filed” with the clerk.

It seems reasonable to expect that notices should be emailed by the committee or the council to those who have requested copies at the same time as the notice is filed with the clerk in order to comply with the law.

However, as far as I know, the issue of email delivery of meeting notices hasn’t come up officially in Hawaii yet.

Perhaps it’s time to bring that question to OIP.