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You’re known by what you do.

That axiom applies to news organizations just as much as it does to people. We respond to events — the way Hawaii reporter Chad Blair did Sunday when Ed Case withdrew from the 1st Congressional District race.

But we also need to identify issues to explore in greater depth because they’re vital to the character of our community. By bringing them to your attention, we hope our work leads to greater understanding and serious debate. If we do our jobs well, we believe there’s a greater likelihood that we as a community will come up with better solutions to address our problems.

Human trafficking is one such issue for Civil Beat. It’s astonishing to me that both the state House and Senate could have unanimously approved an anti-human trafficking bill that is uniformly opposed by law enforcement. But that’s exactly what happened this year. This is the third legislature I’ve covered as an editor, and in my experience it’s rare to find lawmakers rejecting the counsel of police and prosecutors. My guess is that public defenders would tell you the same thing.

The cynic in me might argue that some lawmakers voted the way they did because no politician would want to face an election opponent who could point to a vote against tougher laws on pimps and human traffickers. How would a lawmaker defend rejecting cracking down on the worst among us? So, they might think, ‘let the governor veto it,’ given that her attorney general is one of the most articulate advocates against the .

Or maybe it’s convenient for Democrats, who dominate both chambers, to pass on to a Republican governor they want to make look bad, a bill that they know she’ll have to veto. Let her be the one to be labeled soft on crime. It’s difficult to imagine why she would buck prosecutors and police and allow SB 2045 to become law when she can veto it and encourage lawmakers to go back to the drawing table and come up with something that garners wider support.

SB 2045 is one piece of the story of how Hawaii has tried to deal with human trafficking since 2005, when it was among the first states to form a federally-financed anti-trafficking task force. Assistant Editor Sara Lin and Adrienne LaFrance, a new regular contributor to Civil Beat, will be exploring the issue further. Adrienne’s article on Hawaii’s weak laws on “johns,” the customers of prostitutes, and the reasons given for not changing them raised a host of other questions we’ll try to answer.

It seemed like this was a week where flaws in proposed laws was a theme at Civil Beat. Land reporter Michael Levine exposed a Honolulu proposal that would limit the size of new farmhouses on the island to 1,500 square feet. The bill gave no explanation for where that number came from, but suffice it to say that it’s 40 percent smaller than the average new house in the western United States and nationally. Sometimes you’ve got to wonder what people who make laws are thinking?

We’ll keep asking that question, and keeping our eye on the people making laws. That’s a central part of our job at Civil Beat. We’re so appreciative of the contributions/comments our members are making in response to this kind of work. I’ve shared in a separate article some examples you don’t want to miss.

Civil beat isn’t just about what we provide our members. It’s also about how our staff interacts with our members, and the public. We hope that’s become clear after a month.

See you next week.

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