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Two bills before the Legislature would try to clarify which names of police officers can be released under Hawaii’s open records laws.

requires the release of the names, job titles and salaries of all public employees, except “present or former employees involved in an undercover capacity in a law enforcement agency.”

The problem is that the law contains no definition of undercover officer, and when Civil Beat last year requested the information, the Honolulu Police Department refused to provide it for any of the department’s officers. (All state agencies and the rest of Honolulu government complied.)

Now we have two identical bills — and — that attempt to clarify the issue.

The bills propose changing the law to require that government agencies make available information about employees as long as it doesn’t “require the creation of a roster of employees,” and that the names of undercover officers only be made available after the officer has “ceased to be involved in an undercover capacity for at least five years.”

The bills say “Undercover officer” means “a law enforcement employee who works in an undercover capacity.” “Undercover capacity” means any law enforcement activity that requires the employee to conceal the employee’s identity as a law enforcement officer.

It’s important to remember in considering this issue that the Police Department in the Internet era is a publisher, much like Civil Beat. So whatever laws it supports will actually apply to its own publishing operation. It already shares information, such as the names and photos of officers, with the public. You can see examples of what I’m talking about and and.

It also has its own and publishes reports, including its , which are available to the general public online.

Despite the department’s refusal to release public information to Civil Beat, allegedly out of concern for the privacy of its officers, the department has admitted to Civil Beat that it routinely publishes names and photographs of officers, without doing any research into whether they are current or former undercover officers.

It also has admitted that it doesn’t know who has worked undercover. Civil Beat was told that the department does not keep any record of undercover service in its personnel files. One reason is that it’s possible other officers would intentionally or otherwise make public such information if they learned of it, potentially endangering the life of a fellow officer.

The only way the department could see determining which officers were covered was to interview every officer. The union claimed to Civil Beat that 99 percent of officers had worked undercover, because they had worked at least one day in a plainclothes capacity. The chief thinks the total should be much smaller, but is looking for guidance from the Legislature.

Bottom line: The department had no problem releasing the names of officers without ever researching their careers, until Civil Beat came along and asked for their salaries too.

The department and union say this isn’t about salaries, but if it isn’t, why didn’t they protect their own officers in the first place? Paramilitary organizations like the police are accustomed to standard operating procedures and implementing such procedures before identifying officers would not have been difficult. But no effort was made to do so. Instead, the department widely disseminated names and photographs of officers.

The police bills do make one positive step in establishing a sunset for when it’s no longer necessary to keep confidential the names of undercover officers.

But the bills are sorely lacking because they do not include a clear and precise definition of undercover, nor do they acknowledge that until now the department hasn’t cared a whit about this issue and hasn’t suffered any consequences as a result of its actions.

As for the part of the bill that would not require creating a roster to comply with a request, that’s a red herring. Do you not think the chief could have a list of his employees on his desk in the morning if he wanted one, with their salaries and any other financial information he wants?

If he can’t, there’s something wrong with the organization. If he can, that document, or a version of it, should be public.

Lawmakers should demand a much more rigorous accounting from the police. Some questions they might ask:

• What is done on the mainland? Civil Beat has found that departments protect a small percentage of officers and that’s it. In Texas, not known as a blue state like Hawaii, the names and salary of every officer are .

• What’s the difference between an undercover officer and a plainclothes officer? Does an undercover officer carry a police gun, badge and continue to use his or her real identity? Does a plainclothes officer carry a police gun, badge and continue to use his or her real identity? has an undercover exception, and dozens of officers are covered. But the definition is not nearly as sweeping as the one proposed for Hawaii.

• Who knows when an officer is working plainclothes and who knows when an officer is working undercover? Civil Beat was told that when officers are working undercover they literally disappear for months at a time without explanation. Does the same hold true for plainclothes officers?

• What do the bills mean when they say “conceal the employee’s identity as a law enforcement officer?” From whom? Internally? Or just externally?

The public has a deep interest and right to know who is working for it, especially who’s carrying a gun on its behalf.

The Legislature should send a clear message. The police department isn’t a private organization. It can’t have one rule for itself and one rule for the public. That’s the way it’s been operating until now.