Category Archives: Legislature

Honor the dying

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The state of Hawaii is a step closer to recognizing a person’s right to die in a dignified manner after a bill providing for medical aid in dying was sent to the full House for a vote following a lengthy public hearing on Tuesday.

HB2739 was amended in committee before being forwarded on for a vote. You can read the original and amended bills, and browse the written testimony received, via that link.

If you aren’t sure, I’ll be clear–I’m a strong advocate of being able to control the way we die. We’ve gotten close in the legislature before, but came up short. This year, the bill has the support of the governor and key legislators. I’m hopeful the will be the year it will finally be adopted and become law.

In honor of this occasion, I’m reprinting a Civil Beat column I wrote just after my mother’s death at the beginning of 2013.

Honor The Dying By Letting Them Go

We can do better for our loved ones than a lingering death by natural means.
/ January 31, 2013

My mother died this week, just months before her 99th birthday.

She enjoyed a long and rich life. At the end, she was fortunate to have wonderful care in a small, residential hospice facility in the back of Palolo Valley.

But here’s the rub. If you are not fortunate enough to have one of those unexpected and quick “now-you’re’-here-and-now-you’re-not” exits, then dying is hard to do, even with the best of care. It is hard, exhausting work for the person who is dying, and excruciatingly difficult for family and friends who can’t do more than stand by while the process wends towards its inevitable conclusion.

My mother followed all the best advice well in advance. She prepared a legal medical directive making perfectly clear that if something unexpected happened, she did not want to be kept alive through extraordinary medical means. She had seen enough to know she did not want to live if permanently disabled, in pain, or otherwise unable to take care of herself and enjoy life’s simple pleasures.

Last year, as her overall health and mobility began to decline, she qualified to receive hospice support and services while continuing to live in the home where she had already spent 70 years.
In recent months her life became more and more constrained as the process of dying moved inexorably forward. My mother went through common stages described to us in advance by hospice staff — eating and drinking progressively less and less until half a piece of toast and a couple of orange slices were all she could handle, and gradually sleeping more and more until the majority of her days were spent in bed.

It was clear where this was heading. She had already prepared by organizing her personal and financial information, sorting through personal possessions, giving some things away, discarding others. She made lists instructing us on what to do and who to contact after she died. She drafted her own obituary in what was still a strong hand.

Then, as happens all too often, a relatively minor fall triggered cascading medical problems. A second fall led to an emergency room visit and, finally, admission into the hospice home in Palolo where she spent her final days. Despite the best possible hospice care and availability of pain control medication, such endings are not easy. And the end of her life was no different.

For the last two weeks, she had virtually nothing to eat or drink although, in one of her final partly coherent moments, she told us she was not hungry or thirsty. This may have been the result of the body’s natural process of shutting down but, in her case, I think it was also partly volitional.
According to hospice literature, it is not unusual for dying patients to voluntarily stop eating and drinking as a way to hasten death. It’s one of the last choices that can be made by a frail, elderly person who no longer enjoys a quality life. I think it’s the choice my mother made in the absence of other alternatives.

But is a lingering death by natural means really the best we can offer?

As devoted pet owners, we know there’s a point where an ailing cat or dog in the wild would find a dark place to hide and simply wait to die. When one of our cats reaches that point, we know further efforts to prolong their lives are only temporary, and more for our own benefit than theirs because we aren’t ready to say goodbye. And so, as difficult as it is, we ask our vet to painlessly end their suffering. We say our long goodbye, then tearfully share their final moments.

Don’t people deserve a similar option, a quick, painless, medically assisted exit when death is inevitable?

I have come away from my mother’s death this week, and my dad’s passing two years ago, an even stronger supporter of so-called “death with dignity” laws broad enough to give all of us a clear, legally recognized right to control when, and under what circumstances, we wish to leave this life, and to do so as comfortably and painlessly as possible.

Con Con delegates had little to say about Hawaiian as “official language”

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The dispute in a Wailuku courtroom last week over the request by a defendant to speak in the Hawaiian language called attention to a provision in the Hawaii State Constitution which makes Hawaiian an official language of the state, alongside English.

The incident prompted the Judiciary to enunciate a new policy to provide Hawaiian language interpreters “to the extent reasonably possible when parties in courtroom proceedings choose to express themselves through the Hawaiian language.”

There were frequent references to the constitutional provision in news accounts and social media, with some concluding there was no choice in the matter.

“I really don’t know how they could do anything else in as much as it is one of the two official State languages,” was a typical comment.

Article XV, Section 4, was proposed by the 1978 Constitutional Convention and approved by voters in that year’s election. It provides simply:

English and Hawaiian shall be the official languages of Hawaii, except that Hawaiian shall be required for public acts and transactions only as provided by law.”

In order to get a better sense of what the constitutional provision means, I went back to the proceedings of the 1978 Constitutional Convention, where the amendment originated.

So what did the delegates have to say about the second language provision?

Surprisingly, very little.

Standing Committee Report No. 57 included this brief comment when the proposal was submitted to the convention, recognizing the practical problems that would be created by an expansive view of Hawaiian as an official language equal in all respects to English.

Your Committee decided to make this amendment to the Constitution in order to give full recognition and honor to the rich cultural inheritance that Hawaiians have given to all ethnic groups of this State, by making Hawaiian an official language of the State. However, your Committee was cognizant of certain practical problems that might exist if Hawai‘i was declared an official language without any proviso. The committee feared that all official acts and transactions might have to be in Hawaiian, such as statutes, proceedings of the legislature and judicial decisions. At this point in history, it might be too expensive and impractical to require both languages in these situations. The committee decided that it would be more sensible to delegate discretion to the legislature in determining the appropriate documents and acts to be in both languages. (Standing Committee Report No. 57, reprinted in Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of Hawai‘i at 637 (1980).) (Emphasis added.)

And even less was said when the proposal came up for discussion and debate in by the Committee of the Whole.

When the “second language” proposal came up, the chairman had a hard time getting any comments.

The next section is listed “Official Languages.” The floor is open for discussion on official language. Is there any discussion? Second time, any discussion on it? Third and last time…

Finally, Delegate Helene Hale from Hilo said she supported it because she could remember when election ballots had been printed in both English and Hawaiian.

Then Delegate Fenchy DeSoto added her brief thoughts, which minimized the expected impact of becoming an official language.

This section in no way dictates that all laws and all official documents–and that teachers shall have to teach in Hawaiian. All it does is give recognition that English and Hawaiian shall be the official languages of Hawaii, except that “Hawaiian shall be required for publicactsandtransactionsonlyasprovidedbylaw.“ So there’s no law directing that that is going to happen.

Finally, Delegate Calvin Ontai:

I’d like to speak for this proposal. I see nothing harmful here. It does no harm, and it does some good. And anytime the balance of the scale tips one way, I think it should be passed.

And that’s it.

By comparison, debate went on for some time on amendments requiring Hawaiian language, culture and history to be taught in schools, and protecting traditional and customary cultural practices. Those debates and discussions take up many pages in the transcript of the Con Con proceedings. And, of course, the proposal to create an Office of Hawaiian Affairs was extensively debated.

But creating a second official language seemed to be an afterthought, sort of an add-on to the other amendments that seemed much more relevant and important at the time.

So although interpreting a provision like this often tracks back through its legislative history or, as in this case, the records of the Constitutional Convention, it doesn’t appear to shed much light on the intent of the delegates when they almost offhandedly approved the state’s second official language.

Great investigative reporting from Oklahoma nonprofit newsroom

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I just discovered “The Frontier,” a nonprofit digital news startup in Oklahoma, of all places. Following a link via Investigative Reporters & Editors, I’ve been reading an excellent five-part series on the failure of the system for investigating and responding to rape and sexual assault.

“Shadowland: How rape stays hidden in Oklahoma.”

A yearlong investigation by The Frontier has examined rape and sexual assaults in Oklahoma, uncovering a war-within-a-war that requires some victims to fight for their own justice while government and private agencies fight for money, personnel and proven training methods to assist victims.

The Frontier conducted more than 70 interviews to put the state’s undeclared rape crisis in perspective.

Our investigation documents how the pleas of women and men who have been sexually assaulted have fallen on deaf ears from the state Capitol all the way to the White House. Their efforts to hold attackers accountable are part of a national trend that has swept up powerful men in Hollywood, Washington and across the nation.

This is a very disturbing series. The reporting was done in Oklahoma but, as the series points out, it could have been anywhere.

It makes me wonder about how sex crimes are handled in Hawaii’s tourism oriented economy, where good reporting might be considered bad for business. And in local communities, where all too often police officers know the assailants.

In any case, it’s another great example of good investigative reporting being done in local online newsrooms.

Star-Advertiser story questions senator’s role in harbor PR contract

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The Star-Advertiser’s Allison Schaefers has a good story today reporting questions being raised about a public relations contract awarded by the state to a company in which Senator Donovan Dela Cruz holds a 10% ownership interest and holds the title of director of communications (“Conflicts arise over harbor contract“).

According to the Star-Advertiser, the $99,885 contract “for outreach services on the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor redevelopment” isn’t a big ticket item or a source of big profits. But it certainly illustrates how perceived conflicts can undermine public confidence in government programs.

It also raises questions about a provision of the state’s ethics law which prohibits contracts with a company in which a legislator or state employee is involved, at least under certain circumstances.

Here’s the relevant statute.

§84-15 Contracts. (a) A state agency shall not enter into any contract to procure or dispose of goods or services, or for construction, with a legislator, an employee, or a business in which a legislator or an employee has a controlling interest, involving services or property of a value in excess of $10,000 unless:

The contract is awarded by competitive sealed bidding pursuant to section 103D-302;

The contract is awarded by competitive sealed proposal pursuant to section 103D-303; or

The agency posts a notice of its intent to award the contract and files a copy of the notice with the state ethics commission at least ten days before the contract is awarded.

Under the current law, a company in which a legislator has an interest isn’t covered by the statute unless the legislator holds a “controlling interest.” Typically a controlling interest would be 50%, but could require a much smaller share depending on the circumstances. In a large, publicly traded corporation, a controlling interest could be as small as 5-10%, according to investopedia.com.

It seems to me that this provision should apply whenever a legislator or public employee holds a “substantial” share of the business.

That’s the standard used in the key conflict of interest provision of the ethics law.

No employee shall take any official action directly affecting:

(1) A business or other undertaking in which the employee has a substantial financial interest…

It leaves it to the ethics commission to determine whether, in the factual context of a specific situation, a financial interest is “substantial.”

It should also be noted that the conflict of interest provision would apply to the senator and prohibit him from taking certain official actions affecting the company, even if the contract provision does not currently apply.