The Office of Information Practices is concerned about bills requested by the counties that to loosen or remove the restrictions on multiple members of a board covered by the state’s sunshine law attending meetings sponsored by other groups. County council members, for example, complain the existing sunshine law restrictions prevent members from sitting in on community meetings if it would include a quorum of the council.
In a recent legislative update, OIP pointed to H.B. 2139, H.D. 1, which passed the House and crossed over to the Senate as amended by the House Judiciary Committee.
According to OIP:
The House draft that is crossing over to the Senate would essentially eliminate a useful form of permitted interaction applicable to boards in general, which has allowed boards with a need for continuing education related to their work to ensure that their membership has current knowledge. At the same time, the House draft still leaves a large Sunshine Law loophole for county councils. As an example of a potential loophole, the language of the House draft could conceivably result in all council members being invited to a “free” informational meeting or presentation organized by proponents of a particular project where the council members could discuss the project, without prior notice to the public or the requirement to keep minutes of the event. Yet, more than two non-council board members would be prevented under the House draft form attending professional development seminars or conventions on the mainland.
The companion bill, S.B. 2962, S.D. 1, did not cross over to the House from the Senate, but had been amended to contain most of the language developed by OIP at the request of the Senate Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs (“PSM”), as explained in OIP’s February 12 What’s New article.
The implication here appears to be that the Senate language is available and could be substituted for the House approved version when the bill returns to PSM, an example of a positive use of “gut & replace.”
The Senate PSM Committee has scheduled a hearing on the bill tomorrow, March 11, at 2:50 p.m.
Several other bills highlighted by OIP are intended to bring provisions of the Uniform Information Practices Act, the state’s public records law, and the sunshine law, into conformance with court decisions and other laws.
For example, according to OIP:
A second bill crossing over from the House to the Senate, H.B. 1812, H.D. 1, would conform the law to be consistent with the Hawaii Supreme Court’s and OIP’s treatment of suspended police officers’ misconduct information, so as to require disclosure of suspensions and discharges. The bill also requires the retention of disciplinary records for at least eighteen months after the police department’s annual report of misconduct incidents.
OIP’s news updates are useful for tracking these issues. You can find them here in an archive of recent items.
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The substitution of the Senate wording for that the House bill is a typical amendment process, just as as it was in the Senate, not a “gut and replace” maneuver. Whatever one may think of the issue, all versions of the bill in both houses attempt to address the same one, namely to increase flexibility for county council members to meet with community groups . What’s objectionable about “gut and replace” is when the entire contents of a bill are removed and replaced with a bill that is on a wholly different topic (though it may still come under the original bill’s broad heading, such as “Related to Information Practices.”) An example of gut and replace a while back was a bill on school textbooks that was replaced with a bill on gambling!