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03/15/07
Sunshine Week 2007
Some
government agencies flout openness laws
By MARK NIESSE
Associated Press Writer
HONOLULU (AP) -- When Hawaii's open government office told
the Kauai County Council to reveal what it talked about behind
closed doors in a January 2005 meeting, the council refused.
Now the case is stuck in court because the Office of Information
Practices, which interprets the state's openness laws, doesn't
have any enforcement power.
Government bodies throughout the state -- from neighborhood
boards to city committees -- at times conduct business in
private and fail to notify the public about what they're doing,
according to records compiled by the Office of Information
Practices.
Usually these government agencies comply with opinions requiring
more openness, but when they don't, the only recourse is for
a member of the public to go to court.
This is Sunshine Week, a nationwide effort to draw attention
to the public's right to know the activities of their government.
"There are those handful of times when a board or agency
has decided to thumb their nose at what the Office of Information
Practices has decided," said OIP Director Les Kondo.
"Agencies should be required to comply with our decisions."
In the Kauai County Council case, Kondo's office ruled the
council should give the public access to executive session
minutes after it had discussed whether to conduct an investigation
of the Kauai Police Department.
The council protested, and the court case is still pending.
Out of 40 investigations conducted by the Office of Information
Practices from 2004 to 2006, the open meetings law was not
complied with at least 13 times, according to an analysis
of state records.
Many of these violations occurred when a government body decided
to meet in a closed executive session without good reason.
Another common problem is when neighborhood boards neglect
to specifically list what they will discuss at their upcoming
meetings.
"There have been situations where the Office of Information
Practices gives out an opinion or ruling and there's really
no way to enforce it," said Sen. Les Ihara, D-Kahala-Palolo.
"I just doesn't seem to have been a priority in the state
to back up the public's right to know with enforcement."
Sometimes, a board won't openly disobey an Office of Information
Practices ruling, but it will take its time before complying,
Kondo said.
For example, the office instructed the Board of Education
last fall to disclose minutes from its Sept. 7 executive session
in which it fired Jim Shon, the former head of the state Charter
School Administrative Office. Those minutes still haven't
been released.
"It's a natural tendency to do your business in private.
But with a government board, that's not how things are done,"
Kondo said. "Open government is a bedrock and foundation
for our form of government."
Ihara said he has repeatedly introduced bills that would give
the Office of Information Practices enforcement powers, but
they have been shot down every time.
This year, several proposals are still alive in the Legislature
that would more clearly define openness rules for government
boards.
The measures would allow boards to have meetings even without
a quorum, permit board members to attend another board's informational
meeting, allow open-ended public comment periods on neighborhood
board agendas and give neighborhood boards the right to vote
on new agenda items if they affect health and safety.
"We haven't progressed enough. I have not found that
agencies are any more responsive to citizens' right-to-know
requests," Ihara said. "What's needed is a higher
level of agencies' understanding of citizens' right to know
under the law."
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On the Net:
Office of Information Practices: http://www.state.hi.us/oip/
Sunshine Week: http://www.sunshineweek.org/
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