Dan Mollway, who served as executive director of the State Ethics Commission for over 24 years, submitted this comment overnight. I decided it deserved to be promoted to a main post. Comments welcome, as always.

A number of years ago I drafted as a first step and had introduced a bill to have all charges filed by the public made public, along with any answers to the charge filed by the respondent. The bill also required that the State Ethics Commission make public in writing the rationale for the final disposition of the charge, whether dismissed for lack of evidence, etc., anything short of a public hearing on the merits.

At present, nothing becomes public unless a notice is issued for a public hearing. Until 1995, even our hearings were not public, until I had introduced a bill to address that, and succeeded.

I also introduced legislation in the early nineties to rid our ethics statute of a law that made it a felony for a member of the public to comment publicly on a charge he or she had filed with the State Ethics Commission. Ironically, no matter the seriousness of the violation of the ethics code at the time, it was not even a crime–not even a petty misdemeanor–but a citizen’s public statement about the filing of a charge was a felony.

The bill did not become law, but our office was sued later in regard to the statute, and the federal district court struck down the law as unconstitutional.

Shortly thereafter, the Campaign Spending Commission, as I recall, went after Ian Lind for publicly commenting on a complaint Ian filed with that agency, which was a misdemeanor at the time. The attorney general’s office, I recall, pursued that complaint to federal district court and lost, and then appealed the loss to the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the decision in the federal district court, and chided the deputy AG for his rationale put forth in the case against Ian.

[Lind v Grimmer, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, decided July 22, 1994.]

I was quoted in the newspaper supporting the decision in favor of Ian in the 9th Circuit. I heard shortly thereafter that the deputy AG involved felt that it was absolutely improper for me to have spoken publicly in favor of the decision because I was a “fellow” state official.

The State Ethics Code is in general a good code, and rated one of the best in the country. However, much reform legislation is needed, along with continuous initiative on the part of the State Ethics Commission.

One very important issue that is generally overlooked is resources. The total budget of the Commission is less than the salary of the UH football coach. That alone should put things into perspective. Having five attorneys and four support staff enforce lobbying at the state level and ethics for 76 legislators and about 70,000 state officials, state employees, and state board and commission members is something like having five firemen with garden hoses in Honolulu.

Anyone with a longing for ethical lobbying and ethics in government at the state level might begin by first advocating for a budget commensurate with the task and a staff adequate for the job.