Category Archives: Legislature

Anonymous allegation of illegal lobbying, fundraising

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The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported today on the DUI arrest of Jon Yoshimura, a former journalist who served on the Honolulu City Council as well as briefly in the state senate.

Police arrested the 60-year-old at 1:10 a.m. Thursday at or near 762 Kapiolani Blvd., the location of Yanagi Sushi.

He was charged with operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant and posted $500. An intoxicant can be either alcohol or drugs.

The news story brought a quick comment here from an anonymous source.

I am printing a slightly edited version of this anonymous comment although it is wholly unverified at this time, in the hopes that others will be able to definitely refute it or add supporting details.

I’ll repeat that for emphasis: The following is unverified. Treat it as fiction unless further information becomes available to confirm any of it.

Staradvertiser not reporting that Jon Yoshimura drunk driving arrest due to leaving illegal legislative opening session political party held regularly at the Pagoda Hotel penthouse of a prominent local businessman. [paragraph slightly edited to remove name]

The food, venue costs, alcohol, etc. are illegal and unreported in-kind contributions from lobbyists to Sen. president Kouchi, the Mayor, etc. and staffed by state dept. of transportation employees. These illegal parties and fundraisers are held during session and throughout the year and well known by capitol staff and lobbyists. Many fundraisers for local politicians there are done without filing notices to campaign spending commission so as not to report the illegal in-kind contributions of venue, food, alcohol, and secret political deals are made with lobbyists there.

I doubt that “lobbyists” generally would participate or fund such gatherings, especially if these gatherings are “well known by capitol staff and lobbyists.” Keeping that many secrets out of the news would be difficult.

On the other hand, early in my career I ran head-on into a similar well-known but unacknowledged lobbying machine centered in the State Judiciary, with court personnel and sheriff’s deputies preparing food and “volunteering” to staff fundraisers for legislators and other public officials. At that time in the mid-1980s, fear of retaliation had kept judiciary employees and capitol staffers silent for years.

That operation hid in plain sight for years, so I can’t dismiss this allegation out of hand, although I admit that it surprises me.

You might get a chuckle out of John Pritchett’s cartoon that appeared in Honolulu Weekly back in 2001.

Tracing the missing link

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[Note: Please consider this post, and the initial one a couple of days ago, to be rescinded. I was wrong. Well, mostly and essentially wrong. It’s a short story.

Sometimes when you “make A,” it’s possible to hide out for a while and, after a little time passes, assume that no one is going to notice. I don’t think this is one of those times.

Instead, I’m chowing down on a big serving of humble pie. And I’ve learned a lesson in “sometimes you can overthink these things.”

Case in point–my mystery of the linked reports (or my failure to find them).

I did, after feedback provided here, discover the problem. It wasn’t in the department’s documents, or in the capitol’s computer system and online retrieval. It was in my assumption of how it worked. And I see exactly how it happened.

So I started at the list of reports to the 2020 legislature. I clicked on the link marked “pdf.” And, on my laptop screen, was displayed the transmittal letter submitting the document to the members of the legislature.

And that letter contained an active link to the document.

It turns out that was my problem! Bear with me here. Seeing the active link in the letter, I clicked on it and, in most cases, I got an error message instead of the pdf document.

But…my face is red here…if I had scrolled down past the transmittal letter, it was followed by the document itself. I just never got there because I was following that link in the transmittal letter, which turns out to have been a red herring!

Had I been using a desktop computer with larger screen, this would probably have been apparent. But with my 13″ laptop, the transmittal letter and red herring of a link filed the screen and kept the document safely hidden from my view.

It obviously pains me to disclose my ineptness in this case, but it’s good to know the system isn’t deeply broken.]

Before reading further, see note above.

In a post here on Sunday regarding legislative documents available online through the capitol website (https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov), I mentioned that the link provided to a DLNR report was broken.

It didn’t take long before a response was received from Lawrence Agcaoili
of DLNR’s Information Technology Services Office.

… Not sure where you got the link for the report because the correct link below was sent to Speaker Saiki and Members of the Legislature:

a report from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, “Identification Of Rivers And Streams Worthy Of Protection.”

http://files.hawaii.gov/dlnr/reports-to-the-legislature/2020/CW20-River-and-Streams-Rpt-FY19.pdf

Please update your article. Thank You!

So I went back and repeated the steps taken while writing the original post. I’m using a MacBook Pro and the Safari browser.

First: Starting at the capitol website’s main page, and selected the link to “Reports and Lists.” There, under “Measure Introduction,” the last item is a link to “Reports to the Legislature.”

Once there, you can locate the streams report from DLNR, which appears as DC106. Then I clicked on the provided link to a pdf of the transmittal letter.

The transmittal letter appears to have an active link to the same URL provided by Agcaoili.

I just clicked the link…and got the “404 Not Found” error message. So I tried copying the link in the letter and pasting it into my browser. Again, it went directly to the error message.

Then I went back and repeated the sequence using Firefox. It led to the same error message.

However, if I use the direct link provided in Agcaoili’s reply, which appears to be identical, it works and opens the report.

So I need to apologize to DLNR. It does appear that their transmittal letter accompanying the report included the proper URL that should have led directly to the report. However, once it appeared on the capitol website, the link was broken.

Okay, one of the tech folks out there must have an explanation for why this is happening. Please chime in!

The legislative session starts this week, but a lot of info is already available

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[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.

Civil Beat polls legislators on TMT

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An Civil Beat article today reports that most state legislators who were willing to go on the record with a clear opinion say they support the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea. Just two said they are opposed.

But 33 “did not respond to Civil Beat’s phone calls, texts and emails.”

See “Where Hawaii Legislators Stand On The Thirty Meter Telescope,” Civil Beat, 10-7-2019.

Here’s the basic list as published by Civil Beat. To read the various justifications and attempts at clarification, you’ll have to read the original article using the link above.

Hawaii Senate

Support TMT: Sens. Roz Baker, Mike Gabbard, Breene Harimoto, Lorraine Inouye, Donna Kim, Sharon Moriwaki, Clarence Nishihara, Karl Rhoads and Glenn Wakai.

Support with reservations: Sen. Stanley Chang.

Oppose TMT: none on record.

Neither “yes” or “no”: Sens. J. Kalani English, Kai Kahele, Gil Riviere and Laura Thielen.

Declined comment: Sens. Les Ihara, Jarrett Keohokalole and Russell Ruderman.

Did not respond: Sens. Donovan Dela Cruz, Kurt Fevella, Dru Kanuha, Gil Keith-Agaran, Michelle Kidani, Ron Kouchi and Maile Shimabukuro.

Could not be reached: The office of Sen. Brian Taniguchi said he was traveling abroad and could not be reached for comment.

Hawaii House of Representatives

Support TMT: Reps. Della Au Belatti, Tom Brower, Rida Cabanilla, Romy Cachola, Bert Kobayashi, Bob McDermott, Val Okimoto, Richard Onishi, Scott Saiki, Calvin Say, Gregg Takayama, Cynthia Thielen and Jimmy Tokioka.

Support with reservations: Rep. John Mizuno.

Oppose TMT: Reps. Dale Kobayashi and Amy Perusso.

Neither “yes” or “no”: Reps. David Tarnas, Gene Ward and Tina Wildberger.

Declined comment: Reps. Sharon Har, Nicole Lowen and Chris Lee.

Did not respond: Reps. Henry Aquino, Richard Creagan, Ty Cullen, Lynn DeCoite, Stacelynn Eli, Cedric Gates, Mark Hashem, Troy Hashimoto, Daniel Holt, Linda Ichiyama, Aaron Ling Johanson, Sam Kong, Sylvia Luke, Scot Matayoshi, Lauren Matsumoto, Angus McKelvey, Dee Morikawa, Mark Nakashima, Scott Nishimoto, Takashi Ohno, Sean Quinlan, Joy San Buenaventura, Roy Takumi, Chris Todd, Justin Woodson, Ryan Yamane and Kyle Yamashita.

Could not be reached: Rep. Lisa Kitagawa was traveling and her office said she could not be reached for comment. Rep. Nadine Nakamura could not be reached because of a family emergency.