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On the night he was elected, Mayor Peter Carlisle called government transparency his highest priority after getting the city’s finances in order. A month after taking office, he has no plan to improve city transparency.

Honolulu’s new mayor told Civil Beat this week that he thinks open government is “still a good idea.”

“The more people see, the better,” he said. “In general, if you give people information and the opportunity to look at information that should be public, then what’s going to happen is you’re going to get self-correcting behavior.”

But the mayor doesn’t have any concrete proposals to improve public access to information, and expressed concerns to Civil Beat about openness. Carlisle also acknowledged the culture at Honolulu Hale is tight-lipped.

“It’s a circle-the-wagons mentality,” Carlisle said. “And that’s one way of approaching government. What I will do is the type of metamorphosis that we had in the prosector’s office, from a closed environment to an open one … I don’t know (how) but I’d like to think that we’re more likely to invite people in here to listen to what they have to say.”

But at the same time, Carlisle complained about responding to press inquiries.

“You put this incredible burden on us, and you’re not even paying us,” Carlisle said. “I get into long arguments with people and it detracts from the city’s business.”

Carlisle routinely stops in the hallways of Honolulu Hale when asked for brief comments, but said he wants to stop doing so. (It can be hard to tell whether Carlisle is joking — a press officer later told Civil Beat to remember the mayor’s “actions speak louder than words.”)

Shifting perception

The mayor’s attitude represents a departure from the position he took during his campaign.

“If we’re ever going to have real transparency in government,” Carlisle said during the campaign, “we’re going to have to make absolutely dead certain that the person at the helm is giving you all the facts.”

On the night of the primary election, just after Carlisle found out he would be mayor, he was the one who brought up “transparency” as a priority.

Civil Beat: So, aside from getting the “financial house in order,” what’s the first thing you’re going to do?
Peter Carlisle: You know, I want to work on transparency to the greatest extent humanly possible. The more stuff we have out there, the more opportunities we’re going to have people like those nasty people over there at the Civil Beat to sit there and check the facts and make sure we get them right. I appreciate that work, I think it’s important. If we get that, and we’re transparent, then ultimately we’re going to be able to change things and we’re going to be able to change ourselves to do things better.
Civil Beat: All right, and you know we’re going to hold you to that.
Peter Carlisle: You’re going to hold my feet to the fire. You’ve already done that, you’ll continue to do it and I’ll appreciate it, although at the time I may be very uncomfortable because you’re doing it.

Asked whether he might make public a log of who meets with him in his Honolulu Hale office, the way President Barack Obama makes public his , Carlisle said it would be difficult.

“That’s sort of something that comes out on a daily basis,” Carlisle said. “It changes from moment to moment depending on how much time I have to spend on the phone with Civil Beat. But, frankly, a lot of the stuff is perfectly public.”

In fact, the eight items listed on Carlisle’s public schedule this week have little to do with serious policy:

• A farewell ceremony in honor of Gov. Linda Lingle and Maj. Robert Lee at Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
• A press conference to announce the city’s purchase of new buses, to which Carlisle arrived on one of the new buses.
• Presentation of lifesaving award to lifeguards and paramedics who rescued a heart attack victim.
• Proclamations related to American Diabetes Month and World Diabetes Day.
• Remarks at the Association of Fundraising Professionals Aloha Chapter’s 2010 National Philanthropy Day Awards Luncheon in Waikiki.
• Remarks at the Filipino Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii monthly meeting.
• The Oahu Veterans Council Veterans Day Ceremony at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.
• Remarks at the Na Lei Aloha Foundation 6th Annual Bridge of Friendship conference.

Carlisle said he doesn’t have an example of something specific he’d like to see made public.

Provided a hypothetical example, whether he thinks names of people who apply for fireworks permits should be listed online, Carlisle said he didn’t know.

“I don’t know all the issues related to that,” Carlisle said. “If there’s no legitimate concern, then it could be something (to make public).”

When asked about transparency, Carlisle regularly cites use of new data technology in the Department of Information Technology (DIT) as an important step forward. The multimillion-dollar system was put in the fiscal year 2006 budget by former Mayor Mufi Hannemann.

That data-tracking program was implemented over the course of Hannemann’s five-year tenure, but the city hasn’t figured out which information to examine. Officials will have to work with the company that implemented the system to extract information sets. Once officials decide what to explore, the DIT director said it will be at a minimum months before information is available to the public.

“It’s not like I’ve got people sitting around waiting for a project,” DIT Director Gordon Bruce said. “So I have to look at reallocating and repurposing staff for this project.”

Bruce said the data won’t be available in time to be applied to the 2012 budget, which Carlisle must present by March.

“I don’t know yet when we’ll have it,” Bruce said. “We have to determine what data to pull from where and which agencies to look at first.”

Exceptions to the rule

As the city continues to upgrade the way it keeps records, Carlisle steers a conversation about transparency into discussion of government records that should remain private.

“There can be issues about privacy concerns, things that you can’t release about particular people, health issues, there are many privacy issues that exist,” Carlisle said. “There’s the gray line, and those issues are left to the discretion of the person who has to make the decision — the person who’s trusted, not necessarily you guys, who want to see everything under the sun — but me.”

The spells out open government requirements. Here’s a key excerpt of [Section 13-105].

All books and records of the city shall be open to the inspection of any citizen at any time during business hours … but the records of the police department or of the prosecuting attorney shall not be subject to such inspection unless permission is given by the chief of police or the prosecuting attorney …

Public interest in preservation of confidentiality and secrecy may be sufficient reason for insulation of police or other governmental records from discovery in special, individual cases, but claims of privilege for such records on this basis require documentation and argument by the governmental agency asserting the privilege, and subsequent judicial evaluation of the claim of privilege.

Carlisle said he believes the mayor’s communications should be an exception, and said he is “a little concerned” by the idea that his e-mails, for example, might be considered “government documents” under an open records request.

“I can’t imagine every conversation I have with somebody being subject to review,” Carlisle said. “That (would) result in me being quiet. There are situations where there are negotiations going on, there is sensitive private information.”

City Council Vice Chair Ikaika Anderson said he’s confident the mayor will still live up to his campaign promises.

“At this point we’re going to have to take Mayor Carlisle on his word that there will be additional transparency and fewer layers of bureaucracy,” Anderson said. “I take the mayor as a man of his word. I have the utmost confidence he’ll honor it.”