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One step at a time: The Senate Government Operations Committee moved a few key accountability bills a step closer to reality on Thursday, including a measure that would waive fees and copying costs for public records requests made in the public interest.

is similar to a measure passed unanimously by the Legislature last year but later vetoed by then-Gov. David Ige who sided with some state agencies that argued people would flood their agencies with public records requests. The bill does address requests for common public records like property records or documents held by state agencies but it merely holds fees at current levels. The waiver only applies to records made in the public interest, such as by a nonprofit or media outlet that is using the material to educate the public about an issue.

The cost to the government of the measure appears to be miniscule. Brian Black, executive director of the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest, went through logs kept by the Office of Information practices and totaled up the legit public interest requests for fiscal year 2022.

“Data provided by state and county agencies indicates that all public interest requesters in FY 2022 paid a total of $810.42 in copying costs and $3,230.80 in search, review, and segregation (SRS) fees,” he wrote in testimony to the Government Operations Committee.

“To the extent that agencies labeled the requests with the identity of the requester — which agencies are not required to do — it appears that Civil Beat paid $2,532.49 in total copying costs and SRS fees in FY 2022. Star Advertiser paid $293.75; Hawaii News Now paid $183.75; KHON paid $111.25; and a variety of nonprofits, media outlets, and unidentified others paid the remainder. These numbers show how small the impact would be on the government fisc — as compared to the significant public benefit in government accountability.”

The bill now goes to a joint hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Ways and Means committees. It needs to receive a hearing by April 6 to survive the next legislative deadline.

The Government Operations Committee also moved along , a bill that has been cut apart and put back together again a few times in its short legislative life. This is the bill that would bar officials who are convicted of, essentially, felony corruption (defined as making false statements or entries) from holding public office for 10 years post-conviction.

The House Judiciary Committee declared that provision unconstitutional and amended it so that a convictee just couldn’t get public financing for 10 years. The Senate Judiciary Committee shook its collective head at that change and restored the bit about not holding elective office at all and applied it to legislators.

The Government Operations Committee went a step further and applied the 10-year ban on holding office to the legislative, judicial and executive branches. That one now goes back to the Senate Judiciary Committee for another review.

A couple of other bills moved forward by the GVO committee:

applies the state’s Sunshine Law to legislative appointed task forces, working groups, commissions and special committees but, alas, not to the Legislature itself as many people think should happen.

was supposed to exempt licensing boards overseen by the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs from having to record their public meetings. But Government Operations Chair Sen. Angus McKelvey said there’s no reason to exempt them because they can go into executive session if they need to discuss confidential information. The committee voted to remove the exemption in the name of transparency.

When will they ever learn?: As long as we’re on the subject of costs to state agencies for public records requests, the state Department of Public Safety will now have to reimburse the Civil Beat Law Center nearly $20,000 for refusing to release public information that caused the law center to go to court and get an order forcing DPS to hand it over.

This was a case in which the law center, representing Civil Beat, won the argument that the state can’t keep secret the names of people who die in prison. DPS had insisted information about deaths was protected under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, known to most of us as HIPAA.

Meanwhile, a bill that goes a bit further when it comes to shining a light on deaths in prison — — is up for a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday. The bill would require the DPS to post information on its website about not only the deaths of prisoners but corrections staff as well.