������Ƶ

Don’t blame the folks at the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission if they’re channeling Rodney Dangerfield these days.

“I don’t get no respect,” was the catchphrase of the late comedian and actor.

Dangerfield was out for laughs, but the CSC’s role is a bit more consequential: It referees every election in the state to ensure campaign donations and expenditures are legal and transparent, and it maintains an so anyone can access financially revealing information about candidates and political action committees.

From educating often clueless campaign committees to fining candidates who violate the law, the commission speaks truth to power. So why does it get treated no better than a bug-eyed entertainer?

When it was founded in 1973, the commission was staffed with five employees. More than a half-century later, it is staffed with five employees.

Meanwhile, the workload grows. The CSC tracks more than 550 candidate committees these days, up from about 300 in earlier times. The number of noncandidate committees (PACs, etc.) on its radar has increased from about 200 to more than 300, and it’ll continue to grow now that the threshold has been lowered for when they must file reports.

“The numbers are crazy if you think of us as a single agency that oversees 128 elected positions,” said CSC Executive Director Kristin Izumi-Nitao. “I’m just lucky to have a staff of committed people and a commission (of volunteer directors) that supports us.”

So Far, Help Is Not On The Way

The CSC asked for a $200,000 appropriation this legislative session to hire two more people. The list of people who are saying “no” or “not yet” reads like a Who’s Who of state leaders.

First Gov. Josh Green declined to include the request in his supplemental budget. Understandable, perhaps, in light of all the financial uncertainty surrounding the Maui wildfires.

But surely legislators would respond more favorably if they passed measures to pile even more work on the CSC, right?

Wrong — at least for now.

After its request was left out of the executive budget proposal, the CSC asked that it be included in bills to expand public campaign financing.

The most significant of these measures — and the biggest government reform proposal still alive this session — would definitely require additional CSC personnel.

seeks to decrease the influence of deep-pocket special interests and give challengers a fighting chance against incumbents. It would do so by offering full public financing of campaigns to viable candidates who agree to spending limits.

It’s estimated the public funding could total $30 million per election cycle.

“It’s such an epic campaign finance initiative,” said Izumi-Nitao. “And this office has always supported it, we’ve been cooperative in providing the data and figures. But we’ve always made it abundantly clear we do so with the promise you’re going to fund it and give us the resources to run it.”

Sen. Karl Rhoads authored the bill and included the $200,000 appropriation for the CSC “to commence planning and preparation” for the program. It was still there when the bill was approved by his Senate Judiciary Committee.

But the money was long gone by the time the measure cleared the Ways and Means Committee, and Rhoads acknowledged he agreed to its removal.

“I did concur with taking out the money,” Rhoads said. “The CSC will need money and more than the $200,000 that was in the bill. It would be better if they got the money now, but it would have been better if we had had no fire in Lahaina.

“Well in advance of the 2028 election, the CSC will need to start preparing to run the comprehensive public financing program,” he said. “That’s still more than four years from now.”

‘I Was Shocked’

To the CSC’s Izumi-Nitao, it wasn’t so much that the money was taken out. It was how it was taken out.

When he amended the bill during a WAM committee meeting, Chair Donovan Dela Cruz seemed to imply the CSC appropriation might never be needed because “the voter certification will be done by the county clerks and not the commission.”

He was referring to validation of the $5 donations from individual voters that candidates would be required to collect to qualify for public campaign financing.

“It’s a huge fiduciary responsibility. We’re going to give these candidates taxpayer money.”

Kristin Izumi-Natao

In her written testimony on the bill, Izumi-Natao had noted that the county clerks had access to the electronic databases that could help confirm that the donors were indeed voters residing in the appropriate election district.

“But it doesn’t mean that we are absolved of the full contract because we need to make sure that these $5 donations are legit and were not obtained fraudulently,” she said. “It’s a huge fiduciary responsibility. We’re going to give these candidates taxpayer money.”

Dela Cruz repeated his reasoning in his on the bill, saying he was “deleting certain references to the Campaign Spending Commission to make the county clerks solely responsible for verifying certain qualifying information relating to candidates.”

He did not respond to a Civil Beat request for clarification.

“I had no idea that WAM was going to remove these two (CSC) positions for the reason that the certification will be done by the county clerks and not the commission,” Izumi-Natao said. “I was shocked.”

Scrambling More Than Ever

Money-wise, the CSC hasn’t fared any better with its own proposal to increase partial public funding of campaigns.

isn’t the political game-changer that Rhoads is proposing with full public funding, but it would still double the amount of money given to most candidates who demonstrate their viability and agree to not exceed maximum spending levels.

This measure also started out with a $200,000 appropriation for the commission, but this was amended to “an unspecified amount” by House Judiciary Chair David Tarnas, although in his he did ask the Finance Committee to “consider” re-inserting the CSC money.

In today’s polarized political environment, the players on the field are looking for more and more intervention from that referee.

Instead, Finance Chair Kyle Yamashita blanked out pretty much all the dollar figures in the bill, which made for a rather vague version of the measure when it passed over to the Senate last week and ensured that it will end up in conference committee if senators approve it.

At least Yamashita didn’t imply that someone else would do the work that would surely fall to the CSC.

The commission had gamely proposed in its original bill that with legislative approval, it could shift gears and institute the expanded partial public funding for this year’s election cycle.

All those blank dollar figures make it a little hard to plan for that, and the CSC still faces the possibility that it could be tasked with expanding the program with no additional personnel.

The truth is, it needs those two positions even if neither public campaign finance bill passes this session. Otherwise, it will be scrambling more than ever to fulfill its vital role as election referee.

And make no mistake: In today’s polarized political environment, the players on the field are looking for more and more intervention from that referee.

“It’s not ideal,” Izumi-Natao said. “You shouldn’t have to operate like this if you are a legitimate, functioning body for the community. So it is discouraging. And it’s just one of those things that we don’t have somebody looking out for us over in the Legislature.”

Maybe that’s because the ref’s calls don’t always go their way.