Common Cause Hawaii is urging supporters to contact the Senate Judiciary chair and ask for him to schedule public hearings on several bills, including SB 653.

This bill would change the due date for annual personal disclosure statements for the prior year filed by legislators. It seems like a simple thing. Require financial disclosures to be filed when they will do the most public good in allowing the public to be assured that personal financial interests are not driving legislative action.

According to Common Cause:

Some lobbying entities also have business relationships with legislators, but surprisingly, legislators are not required to disclose their financial interests until after adjournment of the legislative session. Senate Bill 653 would require legislators to report their finances by the “first crossover” deadline in early March, so that potential conflicts of interest can’t be kept secret while legislation is being finalized.

Is this a problem? Well, according to the State Ethics Commission web site, only a handful of legislators have filed their financial disclosures covering the 2009 calendar year.

In the Senate, first to file honors go to Sen. Clarence Nishihara, who filed his report on January 14.
Senate. Others filing promptly were Josh Green and Fred Hemmings (Jan. 20), and Norman Sakamoto (Jan. 25).

First to file in the House were Finance Committee chair Marcus Oshiro and Republican Cynthia Thielen (both on Jan. 19). Also completing their disclosures early in the year were Marilyn Lee (Jan. 25), Ken Ito (Jan. 26), and Denny Coffman (Feb. 1).

Under current law, legislators (and state officials) do not have to disclose their financial interests until May 31, which this year will be over a month after the legislature adjourns.

Even SB 653 provides too much leeway. Financial disclosures should be due within 30 days of the end of the year or other reporting period. There’s really no reason to keep the public in the dark for so long after the close of the reporting period.

But SB 653 didn’t get a hearing last year, and isn’t yet scheduled for a hearing this year. If it isn’t heard and passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by Friday’s First Decking deadline, it’s dead. A companion bill in the House, HB 785, is already dead after failing to be passed by the first committee before the deadline for lateral movement.

Another bill calling for a change in disclosure timing is on the Common Cause agenda. S.B. 2321 would speed up disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures in elections run by mail. Currently, the deadline for campaign spending reports falls after ballots are mailed and voting is already underway in an election conducted by mail. This happened during the special City Council elections last year.

Check out the fate of the bills in the Good Government Package. If my quick count is correct, there were 20 GoodGov bills referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Only three even got public hearings, all of those were killed.

Last week, I was puzzled about the way mainland transit officials enthusiastically backed Mayor Hannemann’s plan for an all-elevated train system running on a tall concrete platform, although they were mostly from cities which, like Phoenix, have chosen to utilize flexible light rail technology (that can run either on elevated tracks or at ground level) instead of the type of trains selected by the mayor.

Turns out that I was right to be puzzled. In an email being circulated among Honolulu architects following the rail issue, another mainland consultant familiar with the history of rail in Phoenix pointed to what was not said during the Mayor’s rail symposium.

As to Rich Simonetta (CEO of Phoenix’s Valley Metro), I am sure that he did not mention that in 1989 the area’s voters disapproved a referendum that was intended to pay for an $8 billion (back then) 103 miles-long elevated railway using – Guess what? – automated light metro technology based on Vancouver’s Skytrain system [the SkyTrain is also the model for Hannemann’s rail choice]; the successful opposition was based on affordability, feasibility and objections to the environmental blight that would result from an elevated railway built along those wide streets. The light rail concept was developed circa 2000, with construction beginning in 2004 following a referendum specifying light rail that the voters approved.

The all elevated train was voted down by a 3-1 margin.

That Phoenix history is outlined by the Arizona Rail Passenger Association, a pro-rail group.

Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large grabbed my attention yesterday with a column about dealing with an aging parent.

Aging has been doing its business to people forever, but when it’s your turn to face it, it feels new and wrong.

He’s definitely got the right of it. My dad has started dwelling on that sense of loss, of things, of freedom, of memories. He walks the halls of the nursing home some nights, looking for where he left his car. Or he complains to the nursing assistants that we have taken his car, and added insult to injury by even taking away his bicycle. He complains about the meeting he is supposed to attend if he could just remember where it is happening. He stands at the elevator on the third floor, telling people that he’s going home, while the electronic gizmo on his wrist keeps the elevator door from opening. He’s continually surprised that we’re able to find him, and I’m not really at all sure where he thinks he is. He wonders how many other people live in “this house”, which is how he perceives the nursing home.

I know it’s hard for him. And it’s hard for us to try to tag along on his journey. And Jerry Large understands that. Thanks.

Campaign issues…Check out Maui attorney Ben Lowenthal’s assessment of the recent Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals decision in the long awaited campaign spending case on his Hawaii Legal News blog.

And if the arguments over whether or not to limit or eliminate contributions to Hawaii candidates by corporations got you worked up, get ready for the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court to do their thing. The court is going to re-hear a case later this year that could pose a frontal challenge to the century-old ban on corporate contributions in federal elections.

A meeting held this week involving representatives from a broad range of mostly nonprofit journalism organizations has resulted in the call for creation of an Investigative News Network.

Therefore, with a full appreciation of both the complexities and the opportunities to be achieved by more formalized collaboration, the nonprofit news publishers at Pocantico hereby declare that preparations should be immediately made to form a collaboration, the Investigative News Network (working title). Its mission is very simple: to aid and abet, in every conceivable way, individually and collectively, the work and public reach of its member news organizations, including, to the fullest extent possible, their administrative, editorial and financial wellbeing. And, more broadly, to foster the highest quality investigative journalism, and to hold those in power accountable, at the local, national and international levels.

It’s actually very educational just to read through the descriptions of the participants and the settings in which they are working. There’s actually an unexpectedly large number of experiments underway, which I find very encouraging.

Hmmm…apparently I haven’t got the time zone set properly on this site and comments are displaying odd times. Now I’ve got to dig down and remember where the time info is and make sure, or try to make sure, that it’s in sync with the proper Honolulu time zone.

[update] Okay, I found the time slot under administrative “options”. Hopefully we’re all on Hawaii time now.

Whew. Another step up the learning curve.