Take quick action to mitigate damage at Honolua Bay

(The following letter was sent to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and state and county elected officials.)

As an update to the terrible spill and coral damage at Honolua Bay, the 94-foot boat is now further up on rocks, leaking red diesel fuel onto the Honolua coral reef and marine reserve (see attached video this morning). An attempt to collect and remove spilled fuel was a total failure, releasing diesel-soaked material to negatively impact protected coral and a monk seal observed on the surfers’ beach.

The negligent owner was initially in contact with DLNR and the Coast Guard, and now DLNR and the Coast Guard want to remove any remaining fuel and batteries before going through the next bureaucratic hurdles.

This would be a start, but NOT a solution. It will take too long and cause much further damage to our beloved bay. Maui’s best coral reef, world-class surf spot and marine reserve is being destroyed as I write this. Hawaiian residents take this as a very personal insult; we need all your help to get this boat out of the bay and mitigate the oil and coral damage as much and as quickly possible.

Maui County has already approved an “emergency permit” to address this; we pray that with pressure from our elected officials, the state and federal agencies will as well.

Thank you in advance for your immediate attention. Hawaiian residents, as well as thousands of visitors each year, are all heartbroken by this ongoing tragedy.

BARRY BROWN, Mahinahina

Watch out for clone bills at the legislature

We know that each legislature session is a zoo. We know you’re bombarded with too much reading and vetting. How can it even be humanly possible for legislators to CAREFULLY read and vet each bill?

Please DO NOT skim over POWER OF SALE bills. OPPOSE them based on the Constitutional Rights of our Citizens.

Yes, there are some egregious property owners. Some would like to punish them!

But we cannot behave with knee-jerk emotions.We cannot burn down the Cathedral of Civil Rights to fry an egg! We cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are many existing ways to enforce ordinances already.

We’re counting on you to do the right thing.

CHOON JAMES, Honolulu

Corruption or incompetence, transparency is still the antidote

Authorities on good government will point out that corruption isn’t the only explanation for our frustration with local and state governance. Sometimes, the problems we see can be chalked up to inefficiency or incompetence.

But no matter what the issue, the antidote is the same: transparency.

That was the point emphasized on Tuesday by Brian Black, executive director of the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest, who is one of Hawaii’s foremost experts on government transparency.

Speaking with my colleague Joe Kent, executive vice president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, on the “Hawaii Together” program on ThinkTech Hawaii, Black said the focus of the Civil Beat Law Center is “promoting transparency, promoting things that would help government work better. And so, a large part of what we do is help the public out with access to government records, access to open meetings, and also dealing with issues related to sealing in the courtrooms.”

Those are all goals dear to the heart of the Grassroot Institute, where our mission is to promote not only individual liberty and economic freedom but also accountable government.

In order to combat government corruption, waste, mismanagement and inefficiency, the Grassroot Institute champions reforms that will improve transparency in our state. And fortunately, there are several bills moving through the Legislature that would do exactly that.

Among them, as Black noted, HB719 and SB991 would cap fees for open-records requests and waive fees for requests made in the public interest. The intent of these two bills is to combat the use of excessive fees as a tool to discourage requests for records..

This is a problem the Grassroot Institute has experienced firsthand. On one occasion, the institute was given a six-figure estimate for records related to the governor’s decision-making during the COVID-19 lockdowns, which put a damper on our research, obviously.

Black said a fee cap for public records would lead to greater government transparency, with little risk that the public interest waiver in particular would be abused.

“This is actually adopting a federal standard, and about 45 years of precedent and guidance under that standard,” he said. “So it’s not as though nobody knows how it’s supposed to work. It’s just a matter of applying it.”

Black said another significant bill this year would prevent the governor or any of Hawaii’s mayors from suspending requests for vital statistics or government records during an emergency — as former Gov. David Ige did during the earliest days of the COVID-19 crisis.

Hawaii, in fact, was the only state in the country to completely shut down its transparency laws during that dark period, and the intent of SB767 is to prevent that from happening again.

Unfortunately, there are also bills in the 2023 Legislature that would hamstring open government. For example, SB720 would allow agencies to withhold from public disclosure any “pre-decisional” and “deliberative process” documents — basically any records that reflect the deliberations of an agency prior to its making a final decision on a government action. The Grassroot Institute has testified that such an exception would frustrate the intent of the law.

Black agrees that what we really need in Hawaii is “a blanket mentality of a presumption of access.” That was the basis of a letter he sent to our newest governor, Josh Green, in early January, which was signed by more than two dozen community watchdog and media groups.

If we’re going to make Hawaii more open, it’s clear that we will need to work together to improve the culture of transparency and openness.

DR. KELI’I AKINA, President/CEO, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii