I noticed something potentially interesting while browsing through notices of campaign fundraisers that are required to be filed with the Campaign Spending Commission, and then posted online. You can find the list of fundraisers for current, past, and future election periods on the commission website.

Here’s the provision of the campaign spending law relating to fundraiser notices.

§11-342 Fundraiser; notice of intent. (a) No fundraiser shall be held unless a notice of intent to hold the fundraiser is filed with the commission setting forth the name and address of the person in charge, the price per person, the date, hour, and place of the fundraiser, and the method thereof.

(b) The person in charge of the fundraiser shall file the notice with the commission prior to the fundraiser.

(c) As used in this section, “fundraiser” means any function held for the benefit of a candidate, candidate committee, or noncandidate committee that is intended or designed, directly or indirectly, to raise contributions for which the price or suggested contribution for attending the function is more than $25 per person.

In any case, I was browsing reports of main candidates already in the 2020 race for Honolulu mayor: Keith Amemiya, Colleen Hanabusa, Ron Menor, and Kymberly Pine. Each has already held several fundraisers. In the list below, I’ve just included those held in 2019.

Keith Amemiya hasn’t been a candidate for public office before, but his campaign held the most fundraisers last year. And while he hasn’t been a candidate in the past, he has made a lot of campaign contributions. Campaign Spending Commission records show Amemiya and his wife, Bonny, contributed a total of $93,800 to candidates between 2010 and June 30, 2019.

Amemiya’s campaign seems to be aiming to file their fundraiser notices close to the time of the fundraiser. Notices for six of the eight fundraisers held in 2019 were filed no more than three hours prior to the beginning of the event.

Kymberly Pine held four 2019 fundraisers, and two of the notices were apparently filed late. One fundraiser notice was submitted the day following the event. A second was faxed to the commission at 5:21 p.m., according to the fax header in the copy posted online. That was just nine minutes before the event was scheduled to start, and well after the 4:30 closing of the commission office.

On the other hand, Colleen Hanabusa’s campaign generally filed notices days in advance, while Ron Menor’s fundraiser notices were often filed weeks before the events were to take place.

Providing short notice of fundraisers seems to meet the legal requirement. The law is vague, providing only that the notice must be filed “prior to the fundraiser.”

And it’s difficult to say whether minimal notice is sufficient to meet the intended purpose of the public notice without going back through the legislative history to determine just why such notice was thought to be important enough to be required by law in the first place.

If you have a better sense of why public disclosure of fundraisers is important, please let us know via a comment on this post.

But I’m wondering whether we would be better served if the law required fundraiser notices to be filed no later than when the event is announced or contributions solicited for it? That would eliminate the last-minute filings and better inform the public.