EDITORIAL
Political freebies should be reported

One of the perks of being an elected official is that people give you stuff like free trips, meals and tickets to movies, concerts and sports events. Then we wonder why politicians take bribes. It doesn't happen overnight.

After being embarrassed by a string of scandals, the City Council has approved a $200 cap on gifts given to Honolulu officials. That means those eager to curry favor will have a harder time luring a politician into their pocket. There's only so much wining and dining you can do with $200.

So why allow any gifts at all? Some states ban them.

Council members say they need to make room for the aloha tradition of giving lei, cookies and other symbols of ho'okipa. You can buy a lot of lei and cookies for $200. But their point is, special interests can't gain too much influence if their giving is restricted.

There is an odd sort of logic involved here: By lowering the cost level on gifts, the suggestion is that if the amount is high enough, it indeed can be corrupting. Surely that is not what is meant by reducing the amount.

The real problem with the present effort, however, is the trade-off that was made for limiting the value of gifts: City officials would no longer need to report them. The old law required an accounting only for gifts exceeding the $200 value.

However, the $200-per-person donation doesn't prevent a family of five from giving $1,000 worth of gifts or members of a law firm from giving $5,000 worth of gifts.

That's why we need a public disclosure. We need to track the source of these freebies to determine if special interests have found a loophole in the gift cap law. Conventional wisdom tells us that people who want to gain influence will always find a way around the rules.

City officials needn't account for every lei or box of cookies, but the public has an interest in knowing who's wining and dining them or gracing them with a ticket to the Superbowl.