Posted on: Sunday, May 22, 2005

EDITORIAL
Lawmakers should obey their own laws

Over the years, the Hawai'i Legislature has written a fairly comprehensive set of "sunshine" laws governing public access to meetings and government documents.

The gaping hole there is that the Legislature exempted itself from those rules, opting instead to come up with its own set of rules governing open meetings and public records that sometimes mirror the general law, but not always.

The latest example, and it's an absurd one, is the Legislature's contention that letters and other documents from a lawmaker's office — including those on official letterhead — are not public documents and need not be disclosed.

That position was taken in response to requests from The Advertiser and others for documents involving the intervention of several legislators in the case of a man fired from Norwegian Cruise Line.

The state Office of Information Practices sensibly concluded that letters or other documents kept or sent by lawmakers in their official capacity should be public.

But the OIP has only advisory powers for the Legislature; it makes its own rules.

Legislative attorneys have concluded that these documents are personal and need not be disclosed. Their argument is essentially this: Constitutionally and statutorily, the only required duty of a legislator is making laws.

Thus, the only records that are clearly public are those directly associated with the writing of those laws, particularly records of committee hearings, floor speeches and votes.

All other activities of a legislator — while perhaps valuable — are technically "voluntary," and hence there is no obligation to maintain records and thus no obligation to disclose them.

Get real.

Public servants doing public business on the public's dime, but the public has no legal right to see what is going on? Under this ridiculously narrow interpretation, letters between legislative leadership and county authorities, say, over matters such as the transportation tax do not have to be disclosed.

This is a terribly strained view of public service.

If legislators expect the public to respect and follow the laws they write, they must at the very least hold themselves to the same standards they expect of others.