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The Hawaii legislative session is almost over.

It’s been a handful.

Single-use checkout bags. A casino. Pension taxes. On-bill financing. A slaughterhouse. GET exemptions. UH regent appointments. The Hurricane Relief Fund. Human trafficking. Prostitution. Resolutions. Instructional hours.

And those were covered by Civil Beat reporters at the Hawaii Legislature just this week.

While it was important to cover the doings of the Hawaii Legislature, something near and dear to our hearts is transparency of government, trust in government and the quality of government — all critical components for a healthy democracy and all topics that fall under the heading “Ethics.”

That’s been Civil Beat reporter Robert Brown’s assignment this legislative session. He stayed on top of developments on the main ethics bill, which became known as the “gifts” bill. But he spent much more time exploring how Hawaii’s ethics laws worked and how they compared with the laws of other states. (Short answer: Not well.)

This week he kept his spotlight on the issue, even as the pace of events at the Capitol picked up dramatically. We’re not going to let go of issues that we think are important, such as ethics and government transparency.

• The Price is Wrong
• Hawaii Disclosure Law For Government Officials Not Transparent
• Most Hawaii Lawmakers Don’t Own Stock — Or So They Say, Anyway
• No Hawaii Lawmakers Disclose Dependents With Stocks, Mutual Funds

He’s got more for you on the topic next week.

Robert’s recent work comes on top of other revealing articles earlier in the session.

• Today’s Disclosure, Yesterday’s News
• Loophole Limits Disclosure of Lawmakers’ Income
• The Big Fat Gray Area of Lobbying Laws
• Lobbyist Violations in Hawaii? Who Knows
• Hawaii Anti-Nepotism Bill Facing Long Odds In House

These stories do make a person wonder: Why haven’t Hawaii’s ethics laws been improved? There are such obvious problems.

Among them:

• The state doesn’t have an anti-nepotism statute.
• Lawmakers don’t have to file their disclosures until after the session is over.
• Lawmakers and public officials don’t have to disclose financial relationships, even when they might affect their work.
• There’s confusion about what lobbyists have to report.
• More than 90 percent of disclosure forms are not public.

A tough budgetary climate only goes so far as an explanation for not bringing Hawaii law up to par with other states. Lawmakers have plenty they could do just by using technology better to make government more transparent.

Maybe it’s a question of leadership. Calvin Say has been speaker for more than a decade. So it seems like he bears some responsibility. Shan Tsutsui has only been president of the Senate for a year. But he promised more than he’s delivered on this front.

What I can say with certainty is that Civil Beat will continue to shine the light on lawmakers and government where it counts. And ethics is at the heart of the matter.

It’s clear that we love government and transparency. But don’t get to thinking that we also don’t like to play. We like good old-fashioned fun.

This is the last time you’ll see the word “Week” followed by a number in my “Week in Review” headline, because next week marks one year since we launched the site. So it seems only fitting that we stop counting the weeks since launch, celebrate (more on that to come) — and start counting in years.