Category Archives: lobbyists

A heartfelt “Mahalo” to John Radcliffe!

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Thank you, John.

You bravely spoke for many of us when you went public this week urging the state legislature to finally pass a “death with dignity” bill.

Your appeal was more powerful because you also publicly disclosed your own long battle with a Stage 4 cancer. It’s not just a political issue, it’s a deeply personal issue for you and, eventually, for each of us.

For those who don’t know John Radcliffe, he’s long been one of the islands’ top lobbyists. But he’s also been known for his straight talk, his willingness to openly discuss controversial issues with both friends and foes, avoiding political correctness in order to call things as he sees them. And if that sounds too serious, John has always displayed a fine sense of humor, a delight in irony, with a twinkle in his eye. Even when talking so intimately about death and dying.

Click here to watch the report broadcast by Hawaii News Now.

And for more information, visit the webpage of the Hawaii Death with Dignity Society.

How would you cover the legislature?

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I was talking about the upcoming legislative session over lunch with a friend yesterday. One of the realities is that there’s far less new coverage overall, and far fewer reporters working the capitol during the session. This reduces the amount of information the public gets about what’s going on, and the key issues being debated, and also makes it much more difficult for community organizations, nonprofit advocates, or other interest groups to make their voices heard.

It would seem that the availability of free access to social media should theoretically make it easier to create alternatives to fill the gaps in the much-reduced traditional political reporting.

But has it?

So here’s the first question: Are there existing organizations or interest groups that track and regularly report to their members or the general public while the legislature is in session? Organizational blogs? Twitter feeds? Podcasts? If anyone’s doing it, could the public access the information?

And regardless of the answer, I know there are lots of political junkies here who probably have ideas of the kind of information they would find valuable to receive during the session.

If you’re one of those, what would you rank as priorities? If you were able to plan some kind of regular legislative coverage, what would it include?

Share here, please! Maybe it will encourage some new initiatives.

Not quite missing in action

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Yes, I missed getting a post online yesterday. Lots of reasons, no excuses.

I got dropped off downtown early in the day and spent several hours in the Circuit Court documents room, going through some case files.

When I was done, I headed for the bus and just forgot to finish the job.

One of the cases I checked on was the Hawaii State Teachers Association’s lawsuit against the State Ethics Commission over the commission’s guidelines prohibiting teachers from accepting free travel when serving as chaperones during educational trips for students.

Last week, Judge Rhonda Nishimura voided a commission advisory opinion and related memorandum issued in August 2015 spelling out its interpretation of the ethics code as applied to these educational trips.

Despite some key arguments made on behalf of the HSTA by attorney (and Congressional candidate) Colleen Hanabusa, the ethics commission declined to give any ground or to soften their position. I’ll get back to additional details of the arguments in a later post.

So after hearing oral arguments, Nishimura ruled the commission’s travel guidelines affect a broad section of the public and are not limited to a specific case or situation, are forward looking, and therefore must be adopted as agency rules, with opportunities for public input guaranteed by state law.

One key point was buried in the arguments. Hanabusa pointed out that the same issues underlying the disagreement over teacher travel and education trips are also involved in applying the gift provisions of the ethics code to legislators and other public officials.

One part of the what is at issue is the ethics commission’s interpretation of this part of the law, which provides:

Gifts. No legislator or employee shall solicit, accept, or receive, directly or indirectly, any gift, whether in the form of money, service, loan, travel, entertainment, hospitality, thing, or promise, or in any other form, under circumstances in which it can reasonably be inferred that the gift is intended to influence the legislator or employee in the performance of the legislator’s or employee’s official duties or is intended as a reward for any official action on the legislator’s or employee’s part.

HSTA repeatedly questioned how the ethics commission decides what is a “reasonable inference.”

It’s the same provision at issue, whether applied to teachers or to lobbyists and legislators.

This is dangerous territory, because prior ethics opinions about gifts to legislators have been grumbled about at the State Capitol but not directly challenged. It’s a rare elected official who wants to publicly be seen on the wrong side of ethics.

This is clearly tricky territory, especially because the ethics commission is bound by the ethics laws, which are passed by the Legislature and can be amended by them as well.

If the commission holds to its prior position, and the teachers case is ultimately pushed to rulemaking, it will necessarily open the door to challenges to the way gifts to legislators have been treated by the commission. Lobbyists and legislators may be anxious to renew that debate. I’m not sure the public wants to risk loosening of existing restrictions.

Sunlight Foundation looks at unregistered lobbyists

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If you’re at all concerned about the regulation of lobbyists and lobbying, you will want to check out this article from the Sunlight Foundation, “What is shadow lobbying? How influence peddlers shape policy in the dark“).

The basic premise, backed up by some data and anecdotal evidence, is that lobbyist registration and disclosure requirements have loopholes that are being exploited by many to avoid disclosure. The article is focused on the national level, but I’m sure if we dig down a bit, we’ll find applies to state and local lobbying in Hawaii as well.

Both the article and its rich set of references are worth careful reading.

Shadow lobbying refers to someone who performs advocacy to influence public policy, like meeting legislators or their staff, without registering as a lobbyist — and it’s a big problem for anyone who cares about transparency in Washington. (For further reading on this topic, you can’t do better than to read Lee Fang’s 2014 investigation of shadow lobbying at The Nation.)

At the Congressional level, lobbyists are supposed to register if they spend 20% of their time lobbying for a client, or make two or more contacts with legislators, their staff, or certain executive agency officials.

The article refers to this 20% criteria as “reasonably easy to get around.”

The same seems to be true of Hawaii’s lobbying law, which defines a lobbyist as someone who is paid and spends at least a certain amount of time and/or money lobbying.

It’s widely recognized that Hawaii’s lobbyist law is a mess. The State Ethics Commission has publicly discussed the problems of enforcing the law’s requirements on several occasions. Unfortunately, SB3024, which would have provided funding for a task force to review the lobbyist provisions, appears to have died in conference.

In any case, thanks to the Sunlight Foundation for their excellent review of the issues.