A five-member majority of the Honolulu City Council may have violated the state’s sunshine law by taking part in a lobbyist-paid trip to a rail transit conference in Washington, D.C. last week.
In addition, the attendance of the five council members and other city officials at a lobbyist-sponsored reception may have stumbled over ethics guidelines.
The travel expenses of at least two council members and several administration officials, including air fare, hotel, ground transportation and conference fee for Rail-Volution 2011, were paid for by a $22,000 gift from Pacific Resource Partnership, a pro-development lobby supported by the Hawaii Carpenters Union and its signatory contractors.
One additional council member was to join the group in Denver to view several examples of transit oriented development along its rail system, council minutes show. The gift of travel expenses was officially accepted and is treated as a gift to the city, rather than the individuals making the trip.
But Civil Beat’s Adrienne LaFrance reported last week that five council members, including council chair Ernie Martin, were at the PRP-sponsored reception in Washington during the conference.
The five were Martin, Ikaika Anderson, Romy Cachola, Breene Harimoto, and Ann Kobayashi.
The sunshine law prohibits more than two members of any public agency from meeting to discuss pending matters outside of a formally-declared public meeting. It specifically bars most informal gatherings at which issues pending before the agency are discussed.
According to the Office of Information Practices: “The Sunshine Law generally prohibits discussions about board business between board members outside of a properly noticed meeting, with certain statutory exceptions. While the Sunshine Law authorizes certain interactions between board members outside of a meeting, the statute expressly cautions that such interactions cannot be used to circumvent the requirements or the spirit of the law to make a decision or to deliberate towards a decision upon a matter over which the board has supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power.”
While the law does not prevent council members from talking about the issues with private citizens, OIP advises caution in public settings.
For instance, four county council members cannot participate in a discussion at a neighborhood board meeting about a matter that is council business, even if the council members do not discuss the matter between them- selves. In OIP’s opinion, such an exchange is part of the discussion and deliberation process that can only take place in a properly noticed meeting.
The law does not apply to social gatherings, but only so long as “they do not discuss official business that is pending or that is reasonably likely to come before the board in the foreseeable future,” according to OIP’s “Guide to The Sunshine Law.”
Having five council members–an absolute majority of the council–attending a rail conference and reception where rail and related transit oriented development policies were the main topics of discussion would appear contrary to the law as summarized by OIP.
Further, OIP’s “Guide to The Sunshine Law” says site visits, such as the inspection of transit oriented development in Denver, would have to be considered public meetings and subject to the law’s notice requirements.
City ethics law prohibits city officials from soliciting or accepting gifts “if a reasonable person could conclude that the gift is intended to influence or reward the officer or employee in the performance of an official duty.”
Among factors to be considered, according to the Honolulu Ethics Commission, include whether the recipients take any official action affecting the donor and whether the gift benefits the city rather than the recipient. The law also allows accepting “small tokens of aloha, such as a lei or food to be shared with co-workers.”
It is unclear whether food and drinks at an upscale Washington restaurant provided by a pro-rail lobbying group, as described by Civil Beat, would pass this basic test.
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It certainly fails the smell test. But it’s only one bad smell of many in the reek and funk surrounding rail. Much less stinky, for example, than letting Ansaldo avoid rejection of its non-conforming bid by paying a minimal fine.
The stench cloys.
This rail is a blatant in-your-face scam.
I received a glossy flyer September 2011 from the Honolulu Transit featuring Toru Hamayasu disparaging Cliff Slater and a mug shot of Colleen Hanabusa. Taxpayers should not be paying for this crap.
As a practical matter, I’m wondering how a group of Council members, or legislators or whoever, could go on a fact-finding trip without violating the Sunshine Law. Would they have to, for example, notice the Denver excursion as a meeting? Hoiw would it be conducted? Minutes required?
On the flip side, I’m wondering why these excursion-eers have to so obviously exploit the practiocal limitations of the law and what may or may not be its ambiguities.
If nothing else, one has to wonder at Ann Kobayashi’s participation. Taking her at face value, she does not support the rail project as presently conceived. Has the trip, what she saw/heard, and the fact that it was paid for by PRP changed her position? Confirmed it?
Give me a break here!! This trip was on the committee agendas plus a regular Council meeting. If I recall correctly, NO ONE TESTIFIED AGAINST ACCEPTING THE GIFT.
As someone who first started supporting rail systems about the age of 10, I am willing to live with this system because over the next seven years until this system is completed, we will have shipped over $25 BILLION out of the state to companies providing fossil fuel for ground transportation.
An additional chunk of change brings in fossil fuels for electricity and still more money goes out of state for airplane fuels.
Yes, taxes will be generated from fossil fuel sales, but according to a study done by DBEDT several years ago, fewer than 400 people here in Hawai`i are employed at either the wholesale or retail level with nearly half making about 20% above the minimum wage level.
Of each dollar in gross profits, more than 85 cents goes out of the state.
But the rail system as planned will run on fossil fuels 100%.
Now, if a smart grid is put in place and alternative electrical sources are developed, then the rail system might run on alternative fuels.
But car production in the US and Japan is shifting entirely to electric vehicles. Japan made that commitment some time ago, and Detroit has recently come to a consensus that all American cars will be electric. (See the optimistic new documentary film by Chris Paine, “Revenge of the Electric Car”, which is a sequel to his pessimistic “Who Killed the Electric Car?”.) In this case, if renewable sources of electricity are developed, they will power the cars in Hawaii 100%.
The rail system in Hawaii was originally proposed as a transportation project. But if you watch the YouTube video “Councilman Tom Berg at Ewa Makai Middle School Talking Rail”, less than 1% of respondents in West Oahu interviewed by students say that they would have used the rail system if it existed. So it’s not a transportation solution. (Out of 2,338 people interviewed, only 65 said they would use the rail. But I don’t think even they would use it for commuting regularly; they would use it maybe once a month or once a year at best. So the question was posed wrong.)
Then it was to promote high-density urbanization, like in Kapolei. But no one seems to want to live in apartments on the westside (or, crucially, work in office buildings next to rail stations).
Then it was a federal jobs program. But at most only 25% of the funding will be federal; most of the funding comes out of Hawaii’s economy and will mostly be exported to pay for imported technology and labor.
Now it is being sold as a green project.
Resolution 11-253 regarding the gift from PRP related to two council members attending the meeting at PRP expense, along with several other city officials. Not a problem. The problem arises because they ended up with a majority of the council present, in apparent violation of the sunshine law. The separate ethics issue raised by the reception again has nothing to do with the gift of travel. No reception was mentioned in the resolution or supporting documents.
1979
Pacific Resource Partnership – What a nice harmless name. They fail to include the policy-maker politicians :=)
General Information
The Pacific Resource Partnership serves as the critical link between Hawaii’s top contractors and the largest construction union in the state, the 7,600-member Hawaii Carpenters Union. As an advocate for unionized construction and an influential resource for management, PRP is able to bridge these traditional divides to successfully lead efforts that sustain the robust health of the building industry. Since its formation in 1979, PRP has leveraged its position as a labor-management interface to strengthen Hawaii’s economy and improve the quality of life for its residents.
Working with its extensive network of public and private developers and contractors, and the unionized carpenters who help drive Hawaii’s third largest industry, PRP has advanced initiatives that improve labor-management relationships, increase work place safety, enhance efficiency, and reduce construction costs.
Email
info@prp-hawaii.com
The information society needs to make wise decisions to benefit the majority has become a daily diet of propaganda. Newspapers have forgone any worthwhile content for years/decades and deserve their choice placement from 7-11 to the kitty litter box. An example of the process http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/business/media/why-not-occupy-newsrooms.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4