EDITORIAL
Where's the courage for open government?
The public's right to government information is a basic premise of democracy.
Call it Civics 101.
Yet that right is all too often restricted in practice.
The latest case in point: A Senate bill giving the state Office of Information Practices more enforcement authority, including the ability to waive fees for the public to obtain government records, will not be heard by the House Judiciary Committee this year.
Are they serious? This one should have sailed through. The OIP needs the authority to enforce our open-government laws. The bill would have allowed the agency or the public to sue the state or county to void an action in violation of those laws. And it would allow the agency to waive fees, which are too often prohibitive, to obtain public records. The Legislature in the 1970s already exempted itself from state Sunshine Laws, opting instead for their own open-government policy.
Clearly our lawmakers understand the public has a right to know what government is up to, don't they?
House Judiciary Chairwoman Sylvia Luke, D-26th (Punchbowl, Pacific Heights, Nu'uanu Valley), said she has nothing against fee waivers and will consider putting them in another bill. But, she said she won't hear the Senate bill because she opposes the language giving OIP enforcement authority.
It was precisely that lack of enforcement authority that caused the Better Government Association, a nonprofit Chicago-based civic watchdog group, to rank Hawai'i 28th in a nationwide survey of open-records statutes conducted in 2002. Enforcement is clearly needed to get people to comply with our open-meeting and access-to-information law.
Government is entrusted with the work of the people, and taxpayers have the right to make sure that government is, indeed, doing good work on their behalf and that their tax dollars are being spent wisely. What is it that government fears from letting its own citizens gain better access to information?
On March 16 — officially Freedom of Information Day — we noted in an editorial that passage of this bill would take a bipartisan effort and some political courage. Sadly, that appears to be all too lacking.
