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2023. This was the year the Legislature was going to address ethics reform.

Following the arrests last year of two legislators caught with envelopes of cash, the need for reform was obvious. Instead of acting last year, the House created the . The commission did a great job and reported its recommendations for action this year. 

So far, so good. But then the entrenched powers recommitted to business as usual, and ignored the important reforms recommended by their own commission.

Among the key recommendations were term limits, applying sunshine laws to the Legislature and public financing of elections. The term limits bill was killed immediately by Rep. David Tarnas without even allowing his committee to vote on it. Sunshine laws for the Legislature were never even considered.

But public financing of elections, , sailed through both chambers with vigorous support from the public and from every committee which heard it, yet was killed anyway. Its failure deserves discussion as this story is emblematic of what’s gone wrong at the Legislature.

In support of this bill were a thousand pieces of public testimony, two former governors, three former mayors, two major editorial boards and many leading ethics and elections officials. The good people who worked on the ethics reform commission truly believed that something important like this would come out of this session. Almost every legislator voted for it!

In conference committee mysterious things happen in the most anti-democratic manner. Without any justification Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz killed the bill, by first diluting it and then allowing the deadline to pass. This is the same bill he passed in his own committee, by a vote of 13-0 in favor. (Other votes in the Senate were 4-0 and 23-0, and in the House 7-0, 15-0, and 48-2, in favor of the bill.)

Dela Cruz shows his colors time and again; there is nothing here that surprised anyone. But the fact that a completely ethics-free politician is given such corrupting power year after year is an indictment of the leadership.

To allow such dirty tricks to stand, he had the support of President Ron Kouchi. His House counterparts — Finance Committee chair Kyle Yamashita and Speaker Scott Saiki — apparently stand in silent support of this shameful action. Children need adults to keep the sandbox clean, but there are none in sight. 

Perhaps it is inevitable that power be concentrated in a very few people in a political system, but there are two things wrong with this picture. Concentrated power in one or two people ought to support, not contradict, the legitimate workings of the whole body. And if we must so concentrate power, it ought to be invested in honestly civic-minded people.

Concerns among legislators included fears that too many people might run for office, or that our currently elected officials who won through corporate money might not compete well on an equal playing field with other leaders in our community. These concerns are opposite of democracy, pure and simple.

Any concerns about the program’s cost are misplaced. At the most this would cost a small fraction of a percent of our budget, with great benefits. We pay many times more in the hidden costs of the pay-to-play system we have today.

Subverting the recommendations of this important commission and killing the most important needed reforms is actually much worse than the envelopes of cash.

What we saw this year is not business as usual; It’s much worse. It’s a betrayal of democratic principles and a slap in the face to those who believed that our Legislature was going to reform.

It’s not as if some meaningful reforms passed but this one didn’t. A few relatively minor bills passed, but all the major reforms failed and most were killed without a vote or discussion. This Legislature gets an “F” for failing grade on its own reform project.

Subverting the recommendations of this important commission and killing the most important needed reforms is actually much worse than the envelopes of cash. It affects more than any one issue or group, it affects us all.

We need a serious cleaning of the House and the Senate as a response to this insult to democracy. Many people, including most legislators, believed the Legislature would take the corruption scandals seriously this year. The joke’s on us. I hope we won’t get fooled again.