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Ethic reforms are finally being discussed in the Legislature following a series of scandals in the last few years. These include the notorious envelopes of cash that sent two state legislators to prison and other corruption scandals at the state and county levels.

In response, an ethics reform commission reported its recommendations this year. While some of the recommended reforms are still on the table, others have been diluted and some swept under the rug entirely. But the concerns won’t disappear.

The cornerstones of meaningful reform include term limits, public election financing, and expanding our sunshine laws to finally include the Legislature. Term limits were immediately killed by a single legislator, public financing appears hopeful, and sunshine laws look doubtful, though yet to be decided.

Hawaii’s sunshine laws, which require most public business to be conducted in public view, currently apply to the county councils, boards and commissions, but curiously, not to the Legislature itself.

As Adam Hayes explains in , these laws require that “certain government activities provide open transparency and disclosure to the public or upon inquiry. The purpose of these laws is to promote ethical standards, prevent fraud and corruption, and by doing so engender greater public trust. They are designed to limit corruption within the affected organizations and increase public trust through willing transparency.”

Why does the Legislature resist the basic principles of sunshine law?

When the public business of democracy is conducted in darkness, shady deals are more common and corruption can flourish. The Legislature is currently run on a bully-based system of rewards and punishments where power brokers dictate what will and will not pass, perpetuating their power and rewarding private sponsors.

We see special interests winning out over the public concerns, and the public is left to wonder why their input was ignored, and why so many good bills die without explanation.

The machinery of our democracy is thus perverted into a system of self-serving entitlement by entrenched career politicians, richly rewarded by special interests.

Our state faces urgent needs, but the Legislature responds with foot-dragging and inaction and is not called to explain its failures. This system instead serves a few powerful people, using our democratic system and our tax dollars to preserve the status quo and reward corporate sponsors, in an anti-democratic system without meaningful public involvement.

How might this work, theoretically?

A powerful committee chair tells their fellow legislators behind closed doors which bills will pass and which will die, and their plan must be supported. If any members resist, every bill or funding that matters to those members will die, as this chair has such absolute power.

If such a message were conveyed in public it would be scandalous. But the public view is not available, because the doors are closed to the public on these important discussions.

A single person, with the support of the leader who placed them in this powerful position, dictates the results for all. All the work done by honest members and the public’s earnest input disappears; only the results favored by the power brokers survive.

This scenario is purely theoretical, of course. Or is it?

As a former legislator I can report that this exact scenario happens routinely. It is an outrage to anyone who loves democracy and ethics, and it preserves a self-serving power structure.

These machinations are no less corrupt in principle than envelopes of cash, yet they remain legal and common. An honest legislator who resists such coercion is punished, and the people they represent suffer without ever knowing why.

If sunshine laws applied to the Legislature, this same message might still be conveyed privately, but at least it would be illegal, with potential consequences. To some degree the public could know, and respond to such corruption.

The power brokers say these sunshine principles would be too cumbersome, take too much time, and that some discussions need to be private. But why? Why can’t those doing the public’s business, using the public’s money, have these important discussions in the public’s view, and with public input.

The counties and boards somehow function just fine in public. If it takes a little more time and results in a process that better serves the people, that is time well spent. Plenty of time is wasted on ceremony and fluff; surely there is time for the people’s actual business. There is no valid reason to not do this.

It’s time for the most powerful democratic institution in our state to operate with the sunshine principles that it requires of every other body.