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A year ago Civil Beat prescribed a set of solutions for what ails the Legislature when it comes to public distrust.

Called “7 Things Hawaii Lawmakers Could Do Now To Vastly Improve The Legislative Process,” it urged legislators to pass some simple rule changes that require only 24 hours’ notice and majority support.

They wouldn’t have been a cure-all — more invasive measures known as law changes and constitutional amendments are required for a full recovery. But they would have made for an interesting start.

So interesting, in fact, that on their one-year anniversary we’re taking a fresh look at these recommendations.

House and Senate rule changes typically occur at the beginning of the first session of a biennium. That moment had passed when we offered up these suggestions last March, but it will roll around again next January.

Before then, voters will get a chance to tinker with the cast of characters at the State Capitol.

Clearly, the expiration date on these prescriptions has not passed:

Take away the power of committee chairs to single-handedly kill bills. Require a full committee vote for a bill to advance or die.

It’s important to consider both of those sentences simultaneously, because technically committee chairs don’t have the absolute power to single-handedly kill bills after holding hearings. In practice they do, because committee members rarely challenge such a move.

If a full committee vote were required, the chair’s stance might not always prevail. In essence this would force committee members to say where they stand. We’ve editorialized that lawmakers need to have the courage to actually exercise the powers they already have, and this would nudge them in that direction.

But these scenarios assume a hearing was actually held.

“I think the more difficult question is something I do do all the time, and that’s not hear the bill at all,” said Sen. Karl Rhoads, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a pre-session interview about possible rule changes. “To me that’s the black hole, just not hearing a bill, not putting it on an agenda.”

It’s a black hole that actually sucks in the majority of measures each session, something that Rhoads says is unavoidable.

“At least on the big committees, you can’t hear everything and you only have four months,” he says. “There’s opportunity cost. If you want to focus on whatever your priorities are, whatever you think the priority should be, then you can’t do everything.”

to require that every bill gets a hearing … didn’t get a hearing.

Make testimony available to lawmakers 24 hours ahead of a hearing, especially a hearing where decision-making is going to happen. Make testimony available to the public at the same time, at least 24 hours in advance and when new testimony or late testimony is filed.

The news is a bit better here, with a House rule added last year stating that “The House will make available to the public any testimony that is submitted to the standing committee prior to or at the applicable testimony submission deadline, at the publicly-noticed time of the meeting or briefing.”

Over in the Senate, Rhoads said he thinks most committees typically meet that 24-hour advance notice “unless there’s some technical hiccup.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said. “At this point with the way we process testimony I don’t see any reason not to. It’s public.”

Make amended draft bills available to the public in a timely manner — before they are voted on — and require committee chairs to explain how and why the bill is being amended.

Chairs do seem to have become more communicative about why they are proposing amendments to bills, but the changes still happen on the fly at many committee meetings.

“It’s mainly a time problem,” Rhoads said. “A lot of the changes you make as a committee chair … are pretty minor. Sometimes it isn’t a draft, it’s just in the committee chair’s notes.”

Requiring written drafts in advance “just slows everything down,” he said. “So I don’t see how you could get as much done as we get done in four months.”

It’s a common theme from legislative leaders: There just isn’t time for that proposed reform.

But a bill this session to by converting to a full-time Legislature failed to clear its first committee.

Do away with allowing lawmakers to vote “yes with reservations.”

Nothing much has changed here. Hawaii legislators continue to do this a lot — 935 times during the 2022 session and 745 times last year, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau.

They really seem to love having this unique option — the National Conference of State Legislatures does not know of any other state that permits voting “yes, but …”

Why not just step up and say yes or no?”

Janet Mason

Capitol-watchers just roll their eyes at the passive aggressiveness of it all.

Janet Mason of the League of Women Voters put it this way in 2022: “The Legislature is a place where people are supposed to make a decision, yes or no. So why not just step up and say yes or no?”

A bill was proposed this session to but, as you might have guessed, it never received a hearing.

Identify the requester when a bill is introduced “by request.” The public needs to know who really wants this legislation, even if it’s a state agency but certainly when it’s a private person or organization.

Passive aggressiveness, Part 2: Legislators can introduce a bill without necessarily endorsing it by indicating it’s “by request” of someone else.

This practice was targeted by the Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct last year when it proposed a to guarantee that citizens are treated fairly by the Legislature. Alas, that measure was killed singlehandedly by a committee chair (see our first prescription above).

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a change here, either.

“I can’t always remember where I got the idea for a bill.”

Sen. Karl Rhoads

“If members of the public, including the media, are interested in learning more about the background of the bill, it’s best to call the subject legislator and ask about the genesis and stakeholders involved in crafting and advocating for a bill,” House Majority Leader Nadine Nakamura said in a pre-session letter to Civil Beat about potential rule changes.

Even that might not work.

“I can’t always remember where I got the idea for a bill,” said Rhoads.

“Every year I get a number of bills that I introduce, usually not ‘by request,’ I don’t do ‘by request’ very often just because if I don’t support it I’m probably not going to put it in,” he said.

Rhoads suggested going through Campaign Spending Commission reports to discern the likely sources of legislative proposals.

Then the author of this session’s calling for full public campaign financing got notably frank.

“If you go through my Campaign Spending Commission report, you’ll see that I raised probably a majority of my money from labor unions and plaintiffs’ attorneys,” Rhoads said. “And if you go through and you look at the bills I’ve introduced, informally by request, a bunch of them are from labor unions and from plaintiffs’ attorneys. So what does that mean? Well, in my case, it means that I agree with them about most things. And so I don’t really have any problem putting in those for them.”

“You could be cynical, I suppose, and say, well, this goes back to my (public campaign) financing bill,” he said. “I think it would be better if we had public financing, but we don’t yet.”

Limit the number of committee referrals for bills to only those committees that have a substantive interest in the subject matter. Multiple referrals can often make it almost impossible to move a bill before deadlines. And unless there is a legitimate fiscal component to legislation, there is little reason to have it heard by the money committees, where worthy bills often perish without a vote or hearing.

Regarding the first part, neither Rhoads nor Nakamura has a problem with multiple committee referrals.

“The more hearings you have, the more public input you can have, the more input from members you’re going to have,” Rhoads said. “Having more hearings does not inhibit debate.”

Nakamura put it this way: “The House believes that having multiple committees weigh in on complex legislation should be encouraged, not discouraged.” She added, “committee chairs typically work together and hold joint hearings for time efficiency.”

As for referring bills to the money committees, she said, “While some bills may not have an actual fiscal appropriation in it, the bill may still have an existing or future fiscal impact to programs, agencies or departments.”

Rhoads said the House is more prone to refer bills to its Finance Committee than the Senate is to its Ways and Means Committee.

“Ways and Means can always legitimately claim that pretty much anything you do will have some sort of monetary effect,” Rhoads said. “And the question is, where do you draw the line of how much monetary effect? As a non-WAM chair, it seems it seems to me like we could move the line a little farther away from them being on everything, but it’s a judgment call.

Address the fiscal impact of a bill much sooner in the process. The cost of a proposal or program is too often left blank until the very end of the session where the fiscal impact is hammered out behind closed doors in conference committee. Many bills are killed because that information is lacking.

This is actually more of a plea to simply follow existing rules in both chambers that call for the chairs of subject committees and money committees to consult early and often about spending bills to determine what resources are available and what appropriation amounts they should contain.

Alas, we really don’t see that happening with most committee chairs, many of whom may lack the fiscal expertise.

Way back in 1990, the Legislature to establish an Office of the  Legislative Analyst to assist with determining the financial impact of proposed legislation.

Apparently it turned out to be too expensive, because the office was never created.

A bill this session took another stab at it, proposing the creation of a . Its appropriations were left blank, and it failed to clear its first committee.