Posted on: Wednesday, April 21, 2004

EDITORIAL
Convention Center is still a public facility

It's difficult to see any great potential disaster in a Senate bill that would allow operators of the Convention Center to keep some of the facility's users secret until 10 days after the event is over.

But openness in government is a matter of principle.

"This is not an attempt to keep stuff secret," said Rex Johnson, executive director of the Hawai'i Tourism Authority. "This is an attempt to keep us competitive from a convention center standpoint."

The rub is that to "remain competitive," the center's operators indeed want "to keep stuff secret," at least for a limited time. The operation of a public facility should be an open book, by definition and by law.

Johnson envisions circumstances such as this: A company wants to hold a meeting of its regional sales people to introduce them to and familiarize them with a new line of products, but it doesn't want the competition to know about it until later, when it hits the market.

That's a reasonable concern for a private business. And Hawai'i has a host of private facilities that would accept such business in a snap.

But it's not appropriate for a public facility. The public paid for it and has every right to know how it's being used.

Beyond that principle, some critics worry that objectionable organizations could sneak in to Honolulu under cover of this bill.

The Asian Development Bank, which held a controversial conference at the Convention Center in 2001, was simply too bulky to sneak in under the radar screen. With or without this law, large and controversial meetings won't come here secretly, because their logistical aspects are simply too obvious.

But what about smaller meetings? Should the Convention Center use this Senate bill to facilitate booking hate groups or other organizations we would rather not have in our Islands?

First, this public facility would be doing itself a favor to steer clear of that kind of controversy.

Second, we remember, even if the state does not, that the Convention Center was built with the promise that it would book only very large events, so that it wouldn't compete with the convention facilities in private hotels.

Because the Convention Center has never attracted the business that was envisioned, its operators have been under great pressure to dip into parts of the market it was pledged to avoid.

So there are two reasons for Gov. Linda Lingle to veto the Convention Center secrecy bill: To ensure that this public facility remains public, and to keep it from directly competing with private facilities.