The State Ethics Commission’s recent public disclosure of settlements of ethics charges lodged against the Hawaii Family Forum and Hawaii Catholic Conference appear to be part of a broader move by the commission to provide more transparency.

The two organizations agreed to pay a total of $3,000 to settle their cases. They also agreed that information about the charges and their resolution could be made public.

The commission’s press releases about these settlements got some media attention, but published accounts didn’t note the departure from the commission’s longstanding policy of confidentiality regarding processing of complaints.

A third public resolution followed, this one involving apparently violations of the state ethics code by Mililani High School tennis coach, May Ann Beamer.

In this case, the commission said the coach appears to have violated the ethics law by providing private tennis lessons for pay to five members of the school’s tennis team while, at the same time, having responsibility for selecting members of the tennis teams, designating the “line-up” of team members, and other regular coaching duties.

The commission’s charge alleged a number of violations of the “fair treatment” provision of the law, which provides, in part:

§84-13 Fair treatment. No legislator or employee shall use or attempt to use the legislator’s or employee’s official position to secure or grant unwarranted privileges, exemptions, advantages, contracts, or treatment, for oneself or others; including but not limited to the following:

… (4) Soliciting, selling, or otherwise engaging in a substantial financial transaction with a subordinate or a person or business whom the legislator or employee inspects or supervises in the legislator’s or employee’s official capacity.

Here’s the commission’s reasoning as spelled out in the public resolution:

The Commission has long held that the State Ethics Code prohibits teachers
from privately teaching or tutoring their current students or prospective students for pay. Students have a dependent relationship with teachers and do not share equal bargaining power with teachers. HRS section 84-13(4) bars teachers from engaging in substantial financial transactions with anyone supervised by them, including their students, as well as the parents of their students. HRS section 84-13(4) similarly prohibits a coach from offering or providing private lessons, for pay, to members of the school’s team who are supervised by the coach. The same dependent relationship and unequal bargaining power that exists between students and teachers also exists between school athletic team members and coaches. A coach has the power to select the members of a school’s team; a coach holds practices for and provides instruction and discipline to team members; a coach determines the level of participation or “playing time” for team members; and a coach acts as a key reference for players who seek to continue their athletic careers beyond high school. In this situation of unequal bargaining power, a team member whose coach offers to provide private lessons for pay may perceive the offer to be one that cannot be refused. Due to the dependent nature of the relationship, HRS section 84-13(4) prohibits coaches from providing private lessons for pay to team members.

The commission states that, if the allegations are true, it could reasonably find the law had been violated. To reach a final finding, however, would require a long, complicated, expensive, and still confidential investigation and formal administrative hearing.

It seems the commission is now leveraging its willingness to resolve cases short of formal charge proceedings in order to obtain the agreement of alleged violators to public disclosure of their cases. In most cases, that sounds like a win-win approach.

It didn’t take me more than about an hour and a half yesterday to page through expenditure reports filed with the State Ethics Commission by individual lobbyists. I examined two batches–those covering the period of May 1-December 31, 2011, and another batch for January and February 2012. I didn’t count the number of reports–each stack of papers was about five inches thick.

I was trying to account for the fact that the costs of gifts, meals, and other items given to legislators by lobbyists are only occasionally accounted for on expenditure reports filed by the organizations that employ those lobbyists. I’ve been critical of the absence of full reporting, but there was always the chance that those gifts were being reported by the lobbyists themselves rather than the special interests paying the bills.

So there I was, sitting at the table in the small public lobby inside the door of the State Ethics Commission. There’s a plastic shield and a locked door protecting the commission staff from the public, or perhaps from angry officials, and the place is as quiet as a tomb. Staff seem to speak in whispers, although that could be because they now I am listening for any scraps of information.

The results were about what I feared. Almost none of the lobbyists report spending anything. Since the organizations that employ lobbyists also don’t normally report gifts, it means the legally required disclosure just isn’t happening.

For the May-Dec 2011 period, only four lobbyists reported any expenses, and only one–Jon Yoshimura, representing SolarCity–reported giving gifts valued at more than $25 a day to anyone. It was a little better during the period covering the first two months of 2012, where I counted six lobbyists who reported at least some minimal expenses.

John Yoshimura reported gifts valued at $55 were given to Rep. Joe Souki and Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland during that 2011 reporting period. No dates or details were provided.

He was the only lobbyist to report giving anyone gifts worth more than $25 in a day. Credit for that.

One problem–Rep. Cindy Evans also reported receiving the same $55 bottles of wine from SolarCity on December 7, 2011. They aren’t reported either by Yoshimura or SolarCity. I’m guessing they aren’t the only gifts that aren’t accounted for.

But what about all those other gifts, even from public agencies? The Office of Hawaiian Affairs delivers all kinds of little gifts to legislators. Those legislators who list out all gifts received invariably report those cookies, calendars, and other gifts from OHA. But OHA reports no expenditures of this kind, and neither to any of its registered lobbyists.

And there’s the University of Hawaii. Technically, those lobbying for UH, and there are quite a few, are not required to register as lobbyists. But is there any accounting for the gifts they give to legislators? Apparently not.

Or how about the law firm of Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel? Five attorneys in the firm are registered as lobbyists for a slew of corporations and organizations, from McDonald’s USA to the Hawaii Association of Realtors. And legislators regularly report receiving gifts from the Goodsill firm. For example, House Speaker Calvin Say reported a box of cookies. Rep. Evans reported the cookies in January, and bagels in March. Small things, but with 76 legislators, expenses can add up. But they haven’t been reported.

How about Barry Mizuno? He’s a member of the UH Board of Regents, and also a registered lobbyist for Puna Geothermal Ventures. Again, several legislators report receiving small gifts from Mizuno, but neither he nor the company report spending any money on those gifts. Again, things just don’t add up.

It’s at the point where you can just about throw a dart at a list of gifts given by a registered lobbyist to a legislator, and you are very likely to find that the expenditure was never reported either the lobbyist or the client.

I would bet that the lobbying businesses manage to find quite a few expenses to report the IRS as business-related deductions, even if they don’t report them to the ethics commission.

It puts the Ethics Commission in an awkward position, doesn’t it? There are many unreported expenditures being made, and many of them are easy to document from existing records without further investigation, just some plodding back and forth crosschecking these different types of required disclosures. So far, they’ve apparently refrained from pursuing violators and assessing penalties. Can that continue?

If no one really has to report the small stuff, why would we expect anyone to report the big stuff?