She and her husband, Lorin, hired a lawyer, Todd Eddins, who arranged for them to meet with two HPD detectives to discuss Kevin's death.

"The information they gave us was very vague," Carol Silva said. "They really wouldn't tell us anything and it upset us. All we wanted was some answers, and if it turned out to be an accident or that it was nobody's fault, we would have been satisfied."

Instead, Eddins said, the police basically told the Silvas, " 'If you want to know what happened, file a lawsuit.' "

So late last month, that's what they did.

Jacqueline Domingo of Kalihi visits the vital records office on Punchbowl Street with her daughter, Shonaline Palpallatoc, 11, to get a copy of her divorce certificate. Citizens have a right to access certain public records, either on the Internet or the actual files. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Drawing the line between what's open and what's not was a big reason why in 1975 lawmakers passed the open-meetings statute called the Sunshine Law and in 1988 adopted the state's open-records law, known as the Uniform Information Practices Act.

But many of the voices that pushed so hard for those laws have grown quiet in recent years, often leaving the fight for open government to ordinary citizens like the Silvas.

For them, public records and open meetings aren't abstract concepts that journalists and bureaucrats argue about. They're the basic expectations of citizens who need to know about the quality of public schools, the cleanliness of restaurants or the death of a son.

Police said on July 4, Kevin Silva brandished knives and kicked officers at a Mililani Park. He was taken to a Wahiawa hospital, but police said he resisted an officer's attempt to get him out of the car and was taken instead to the Wahiawa police station.

Order forms are available to request certain records, including death, divorce and birth certificates, at the vital records office. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Detectives investigating the circumstances of his death had been looking into reports that people at the park — among them two off-duty police officers — tried to restrain Silva and may have used baseball bats before uniformed officers arrived.

Michelle Yu, police spokeswoman, said last week that an internal affairs investigation into Silva's death has been closed with no charges filed. No other details of the case were immediately available, and it remains unclear how much information will be shared with Silva's family.

Eddins acknowledged that under Hawai'i's open-records law, certain documents are protected from public disclosure, including records relating to ongoing police investigations.

But he also noted the same law says "public policy — the discussions, deliberations, decisions, and action of government agencies — shall be conducted as openly as possible."

Limited access

The verdict today on just how well Hawai'i laws have succeeded in opening up government is a mixed one.

Perhaps most significantly, citizens have found their demands for access can be heard, but they may have to go to court first.

More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed here since 1999 over state and local government's refusal to release records. Since that year, citizens have filed four lawsuits regarding open meetings and Sunshine Law issues, according to records maintained by the Office of Information Practices, the state agency that oversees government compliance with the open records law.

"If they are organized and passionate they have learned there is a recourse, and the recourse is in the courts," said Beverly Keever, a University of Hawai'i journalism professor. "You see more and more court cases. This is something that should have been handled through some other means. You shouldn't have to go to court to get an unbiased investigation and settlement."

What's at stake for the public is not just information, but money. If plaintiffs win their suits, the government must reimburse them for legal costs that often amount to thousands of dollars.

The OIP is often the first stop for people seeking access to government information. In recent months under a new director, Les Kondo, it has cleared off a large backlog of complaints and requests for guidance on whether certain records or certain government meetings should be open to the public.

But about 80 requests are still outstanding, some of them dating back over a decade. Michael Ben, director of the Big Island Department of Civil Service, just last month received a response to a letter he wrote to OIP in June 1993.

"I guess they put it to one side," he said. Ben had asked OIP for advice after the mother of a county employee sought access to records of a union grievance affecting her son.

"I haven't heard from the mother for at least five years," Ben said. "I think she lost interest."

Budget cutbacks

Many of OIP's delays in responding to requests for help resulted from a lack of money.

OIP suffered huge budget cutbacks under the administration of Gov. Ben Cayetano. The agency once had a staff of eight attorneys and a budget of more than $800,000, Kondo said. Today it has 2› attorneys and a $350,000 budget.

Keever said she watched in amazement as Kondo sat at a legislative hearing in January "begging for $25,000" so he could turn a part-time attorney into a full-time attorney.

In the two years he has served as OIP's director, Kondo has worked to change the ingrained attitudes at state agencies that ignored open-records laws and to educate them on the public's right-to-know.

Kondo said two issues relating to meetings have kept OIP busy: how much information should be on the agenda of a public meeting and closed-door meetings called executive sessions.

From small commissions to bodies as powerful as the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents, agendas have been "too vague."

Many in Gov. Linda Lingle's administration came from private industry backgrounds and were not used to the concept of open meetings or the simple mechanics of complete agendas, he said.

What can be done when a government body goes into executive session troubles Kondo. When done right, the sessions are legal avenues that a panel can use to discuss sensitive personnel issues or confer with their attorneys on pending litigation.

But panels sometimes fail to give the public an overview of what those sessions are about, he said.

They cannot use executive sessions as a shield for potentially controversial or embarrassing discussions. He said that board members, like lawmakers, need to know that they are held accountable by the public for their decisions.

"That's part of the process of our government, that citizens get to know what they are doing and if they don't like it, they don't have to vote for them," Kondo said.

But even with its statutory clout, OIP has very little real authority to make government agencies comply with the law. Bills that would allow OIP to fine agencies for violating the open records law and to file suit to enforce the law failed in the Legislature this year.

As a result, citizens end up suing.

Lengthy process

Those who turn to the courts, however, need to be prepared for the long haul.

Keala Yuen asked the state Health Department in 1999 for records about a private company, AlohaCare Inc. The company operated part of the QUEST medical care program for Hawai'i residents who don't have medical insurance.

Yuen's husband at the time was involved in a legal dispute with AlohaCare and she decided to research available state records on the company.

The Health Department turned down Yuen's 1999 request for access to financial records detailing the $172 million AlohaCare had received from the state. She hired a lawyer, former state Attorney General Michael Lilly, who filed a lawsuit in 2000 for access to the records.

AlohaCare intervened in the suit and it wasn't until four years later that Yuen and Lilly prevailed. Because Yuen won, the state was ordered to pay Lilly's legal fees of $13,608.

"The Hawai'i law is a good law," Lilly said. "It calls for expedited court hearings and it requires the state to pay legal expenses when a request for records is justified. In this case, it took longer than it should have because a third party intervened."

In fact, by the time the case ended, Yuen had lost interest. She was going through a divorce and had moved to the Mainland. She never signed a legal release allowing Lilly to collect his fees from the state. His firm ended up filing a lien against Yuen for the unpaid fees.

Internet searches

On the plus side of the open-records ledger is the Internet, which has vastly improved the speed and efficiency of public access to government records. Anyone with access to a computer can log on to the state judiciary's Web site and track the daily progress of a lawsuit without ever leaving their home or office.

Advances in digital technology now mean that citizens can request and easily receive electronic copies of government records — multiple megabyte-loads of data — without ever touching a piece of paper.

But the technology has created a whole new set of questions about what's a public record and what's not.

Several years ago, for example, it was possible for the public to electronically search Honolulu property records to discover what real estate was owned by specific individuals or companies. Then-Mayor Jeremy Harris decided the system made it too easy for terrorists or stalkers to locate victims, and he ordered alterations that make such searches impossible.

Yet the city sells property ownership data to private companies that make such searches possible on their own databases that the public can access — for a fee.

That same confused approach to electronic records is playing itself out across other government agencies.

The state judiciary is developing a new computer system that will allow the public to view all court records over the Internet, but is considering limiting access to certain public documents, including divorce files, which contain details of financial assets, children's names and personal telephone numbers, according to state Intermediate Court of Appeals Associate Judge Corinne Watanabe.

The public still will be able to view those records by going to the courthouse and looking at the actual files, because they are public documents, Watanabe said.

"But somehow it's different to have such information out there available for anonymous access," Watanabe said.

Changes to the judiciary computer system are being planned by a committee that includes no representative of the public, and that bothers Jo Byrne, owner of Honolulu Information Service, a company that researches public records for private clients.

"I volunteered to serve on the committee, because I think they need to hear from the public and from private enterprise, but they turned me down," Byrne said.

Judiciary spokeswoman Marsha Kitagawa said proposed rules and regulations on public access to the system will be the subjects of public hearings before they are enacted.

Judge Watanabe, however, said earlier this month that a public representative may be added to the planning committee.

"It's never too late," she said.

Conflicting reports

After trying for two months to get information about their son's death, the Silvas finally received the results of his autopsy from the city Department of the Medical Examiner in September. The results were delayed because laboratory tests for the presence of drugs in Silva's body had to be done on the Mainland. But the document only fueled his family's need to find out what was in the police records, said Carol Silva.

The lab tests showed no illicit drugs in Silva's body, his mother said.

The cause of death was "excited delirium," essentially respiratory arrest, which might have been partly caused by Silva's being bound by police at his wrist and ankles and placed in a "compromising position," Eddins said.

And there was something else in the autopsy report that fueled the Silvas' suspicions, Carol Silva said.

"The acting police chief said after Kevin died that he had no visible injuries and that's why they didn't take him to the hospital. But the autopsy said there were over 30 contusions on his body."

The city has yet to file a legal response to the suit.