[Note: The part of this post concerning broken links is incorrect, so please disregard. This is explained in a note added to a subsequent post on the same issue. Please read that for my explanation of the error.]

The 2020 session of the Hawaii State Legislature opens on Wednesday, January 15. But open hearings on various parts of the state budget are already well underway, with more scheduled.

You can find a list of upcoming hearings here, while a list that includes hearings already completed is also available online.

Many of the hearing notices for these department and agency briefings include links to the briefing materials submitted to the committees. These contain useful details about the public agencies and are important places to start if you are tracking particular issues or programs.

For example, there’s a joint hearing by the Senate Ways and Means Committee and the Committee on Energy, Economic Development, and Tourism to hear from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. The hearing notice contains a link to the department’s briefing materials. Many of the other hearings, past and forthcoming, including similar documents.

There are also a number of reports filed by agencies and departments on a variety of topics. The list of reports is continually updated as new reports are filed. It’s definitely worth browsing the list to see if there’s anything available to date in your area of interest.

Among the reports of general public interest are things like the University of Hawaii’s Annual Report on Campus Safety and Accountability, which reports on the prevalence of sex offenses on the various UH system campuses, and results of a system wide survey of students (found in this list of UH reports). There’s an update of a 2011 report to the legislature on illegal fireworks (“Blast from the Past“).

Fair warning–Although this looks like there’s lots of transparency, in practice many of the links provided to these documents don’t work. For example, select the link to read a report from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, “Identification Of Rivers And Streams Worthy Of Protection.” It doesn’t work.

404 Not Found

The requested URL /dlnr/reports-to-the-legislature/2020/CW20- River-and-Streams-Rpt-FY19.pdf was not found on this server.

The links included in other DLNR transmittal letters are also faulty. It wouldn’t be hard for agencies to test out their links when sending out their notices, but that doesn’t seem to be done.

It’s not just DLNR. I tried the link to the Department of Public Safety’s “Report on Sexual Assaults in Correctional Facilities.” It also didn’t work.

Sometime perhaps I’ll have time to rate agencies in terms of how often they provide faulty links to their own public reports and documents.

It’s unfortunately not a new problem, and it recurs every year. The reports can often be found with a bit of digging through department websites, but I have not always been successful.

But despite these common flaws, there’s still an awful lot of useful information passing through the legislature. Do a bit of browsing, and you’re almost certain to find things of interest.

And feel free to report broken links that you discover.