 Ryan: Hawaii ID Theft Third-Worst in Nation
UPDATED 1/26/12 8:59 a.m.
Correction An earlier version of this Fact Check incorrectly reported that the effort was to keep the names and salaries of lawmakers private. The goal was to protect government employees.
WASHINGTON — Making the case for keeping private the names and salaries of state and county employees, Hawaii state Sen. Pohai Ryan said this in a House Labor and Public Employees Committee meeting last week:
“I feel they should have the same protections private sector employees enjoy. There is no other agenda to this. Hawaii has the third-highest identity theft crime in the nation.”
But no one present at the meeting could actually cite an example of identity theft that had stemmed from the publication of salary information.
Civil Beat routinely publishes the salaries of state employees. It’s part of our effort to encourage government transparency, to help make it possible for citizens to evaluate where money is spent and whether it’s spent wisely.
Language in a bill that Ryan introduced refers indirectly to Civil Beat stories. But does Hawaii really have the third-highest identity theft crime in the nation?
Not by a long shot.
Civil Beat asked Sen. Ryan for her source, and here’s what she said in an email: “Please check with Honolulu police department as that is where I got the information several years ago in a workshop.”
But a spokeswoman for the Honolulu Police Department provided that shows Hawaii ranked No. 42 out of all of the states for the incidence of identity theft cases as of 2009.
The report shows Hawaii had 45 complaints of identity theft for every 100,000 people. In Florida, the state with the highest rate of identity theft, there were 122 complaints for every 100,000 people.
Hawaii ranks closer to South Dakota, the state with the fewest identity theft cases: 29 per 100,000 people.
Looking just at Honolulu, the same report shows Honolulu ranked No. 352 out of nearly 400 cities with populations of 100,000 or more.
Other reports yield similar results. , Hawaii had a rate of 43 identity theft victims per 100,000 people in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available. That’s far below the national rate of 81 identity theft victims per 100,000 people. Washington, D.C., had an identity theft rate of 153 per 100,000 people — more than three times as high as Hawaii’s in 2010.
Given the state-by-state data, maybe it’s no surprise that no one at last week’s Labor committee meeting could cite an example of identity theft that had stemmed from the publication of the salary information.
Bottom line: Federal data shows Hawaii has a relatively low rate of identity theft. Sen. Ryan’s claim that Hawaii ranks third-highest in the nation is false.
