A reader from Moloka'i raised a very good question about the Legislature's Hawai'i 2050 Sustainability Task Force: Why didn't the draft report released last week include any recommendations about reforming local government?

"Government controls everything," he said. "Why was government left out as an issue? To me, until we can return the decision-making process back to the people and get government back on track, nothing else will happen."

In that light, you could argue that improving government's ability to respond to the highest community needs should be the first priority in planning a sustainable future for our state.

Without sustainably honest and effective local government, we'll never get on top of other pressing concerns cited by the task force — a healthy economy, affordable housing, quality public education, modern infrastructure, renewable energy, a clean environment, traffic solutions.

And now is an excellent time to start a discussion of how we can reshape government to best meet the challenges of the coming decades.

The Legislature is expected to adopt the final recommendations of the sustainability task force next year just as voters are getting ready to decide whether to call Hawai'i's first Constitutional Convention since 1978.

There will never be a better opportunity to position our government to meet changing needs; the only question is whether a task force dominated by people who have vested interest in the governmental status quo will have the vision to even broach the issue.

Some specific reforms that need consideration:

Campaign finances. Current laws amount to a system of legalized bribery in which moneyed interests effectively buy votes and choke off competition for elective office. The scheme props up incumbents who embrace the status quo and scares off challengers who advocate change.

The answer is to level the playing field either by switching to publicly financed elections or enacting tougher donor restrictions to limit the overbearing influence of special-interest money in our elections.

Ethics. Legislators have consistently refused to subject themselves to specific high ethical standards on matters such as conflicts of interest, nepotism, and acceptance of gifts and junkets. Nor is there any reliable mechanism to detect and punish their ethical breaches.

As House Speaker Calvin Say argued last year before he abandoned his own ethics bill, it takes the force of law to give ethics rules any teeth. And it's become clear by the way lawmakers have ducked the issue that it's going to take an outside force such as a Constitutional Convention to impose rules with teeth.

Checks and balances. Democratic legislators responded to Linda Lingle's election as Hawai'i's first Republican governor in 40 years by enacting laws to "handcuff" the governor's powers and shift more authority to the Legislature.

This has skewed the delicate separation of powers originally embodied in the Constitution, and we need an independent review to be sure we have an all-weather system of checks and balances that serves us no matter which party is in power.

Open government. More than 40 years after the enactment of the first freedom-of-information laws, we still have almost weekly battles over closed meetings by public agencies and official information that is withheld from the public.

An informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, and we need clear rules for openness that eliminate wiggle room, resolve disputes more quickly and come down strongly in favor of the public's right to know.

Term limits. They've worked for governor, mayor and county councils to bring a flow of fresh blood and new thinking into government, and it's time to introduce a system of staggered term limits to shake up our moribund Legislature.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.