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The big news coming out of the 2022 legislative session includes bills passed that spend nearly $1 billion to settle claims against the state regarding the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands but also to build more DHHL houses and provide rental units, an increase in the state minimum wage to $18 in six years and making permanent the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax rebate of $100 to $300, and the transfer of control over Mauna Kea from the University of Hawaii.

All of these proposals — several controversial and some under consideration for years — were ideas that found their way into legislation and finally garnered the necessary support to pass.

But many other ideas were heard at the Hawaii Legislature as well. We chronicled the merits of several of them in our Ideas section, including essays, columns, interviews and Community Voices.

How did those measures do? On balance, not bad.

An essay from the Civil Beat Editorial Board last month, for example, examined recent recommendations of a panel to improve lawmakers’ standards of conduct. While the work will have to continue next session, when a new Legislature is sworn in, a handful of bills passed or are set to receive final votes this week.

requires that any electronic audio or video recording of a board meeting be maintained as a public record. makes state legislators and employees complete mandatory ethics training courses every four years, subject to certain requirements.

And makes intentionally providing false information about the names or addresses of a people paying for campaign advertisements a class C felony.

The ethics training is needed more than ever in the wake of the convictions of a former Senate majority leader and a former House Finance Committee vice chair earlier this year — although it would seem obvious that accepting bribes to kill bills, as they did, is simply wrong.

Another ethics bill, , would forbid state and county officials from holding fundraisers where contribution levels are suggested during a regular session or special session of the Legislature. SB 555 has its flaws, however, as it does not stop a lawmaker from actually getting campaign money while deliberating over legislation, including bills promoted by special interests.

But is good legislation. It sets a cap on the costs charged for the reproduction of some government records, waives the copying costs if the records are provided electronically and waives fees when the public interest is served by a record’s disclosure.

Say Hello To RCV?

Another good idea set for a final vote Tuesday would allow, beginning in 2023, ranked-choice voting for special federal elections and special elections for county council seats. RCV lets voters rank candidates from favorite to least favorite.

“Voters, instead of having to choose only one candidate to vote for, will always get to vote for their favorite candidates, even if the candidates do not have a good chance of winning,” Sandy Ma of Common Cause Hawaii wrote in a Community Voice last month about . “Voters, under the RCV system, will no longer have to feel like there is a predetermined winner — typically the most well-connected or well-funded.”

Ideally, RCV should be expanded to other races.

The Nation that RCV systems in Alaska and Maine made it easier for Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins to show support for President Biden’s nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. The senators were two of the three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson (the other was Mitt Romney of Utah).

“One strength of the RCV system is that it encourages candidates to appeal to voters from across the political spectrum. Instead of worrying only about exciting a base of hyper-partisan supporters, candidates have an incentive to take stands that might attract votes from members of other parties,” opined The Nation, a weekly progressive magazine.

Murkowski is not out of the woods just yet. Former President Donald Trump is backing , who has questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Hawaii is not out of the woods, either, as some of these bills could still die or be amended in an unfavorable manner. Gov. David Ige must also decide sometime in June which bills he will sign, veto or let become law without his signature.

Two other bills were mentioned in recent essays. One, , called for two state agencies to come up with a pilot program to manage feral chickens. As of Friday, it had not passed. Nor did , which proposed a constitutional amendment to let gubernatorial nominees pick a running mate from their own party.

But another idea, also addressed in a Civil Beat essay, that has long languished in legislative limbo was incorporated into The bill, which would create a chief data officer and data task force for the state, is still alive. So is , which sets up what would be called the Hawaii Retirement Savings Program, the subject of a Community Voice.

AARP Hawaii has been pushing for the savings plan for private sector employees for several years, and it seems like it will happen this week. Persistence pays off.