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Culture warriors: Hawaii’s congressional representatives are generally pretty supportive of the military and for obvious reasons. The military is a huge driver for the economy in the islands. And the $883 billion 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which the House approved on Friday, has a lot of goodies for Hawaii including $90 million for the Navy to build a water treatment plant for the Red Hill shaft and $1.2 billion for a new dry dock at Pearl Harbor.

But our two reps — Ed Case and Jill Tokuda — voted against it. So did most other Democrats.

That’s because Republicans, who narrowly control the chamber, stuffed the NDAA with all sorts of un-Democrat amendments relating to abortion, DEI programs, medical treatment of transgender troops “and other Republican-backed culture war issues,” as reported.

“Once again, House Republicans have derailed a bipartisan process for this year’s National Defense Authorization Act by adding harmful poison-pill policy riders that attack reproductive rights and health care for our service members and undermine a more diverse and inclusive military for women, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color,” Tokuda said in a press release.

“While the measure funds many critical national, Indo-Pacific and Hawaii priorities for our military infrastructure and veterans which I support,” Case said in his own press release, “I regrettably had to vote against the measure overall because it reduces funding far below what is needed, including $1.5 billion in cuts to critical military construction projects, shortchanges dedicated funding for Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) cleanup, eliminates climate and military base resiliency efforts, rejects important VA infrastructure funding, rejects diversity advancement initiatives and includes various other culture wars provisions that have no place in a critical national defense measure.”

Case and Tokuda said they would each work to “correct the deficiencies,” as Case put it, going forward. The NDAA now goes to the Senate, where majority Democrats are unlikely to support the House version.

The thin blue line: Some (almost) good news recently for those who value transparency and accountability especially from people who wear uniforms and carry guns and badges.

After 10 years of legal skirmishing it looked like the last chapter in the fight to get police misconduct records fully out in the open had come to end. First, the Hawaii Supreme Court made a key decision that opened things up and then, a couple years ago, the Legislature rolled back a 1996 exemption for county police officers that had allowed them, unlike any other public employee, to shield disciplinary files from public scrutiny. The only thing left that we were all fighting over was whether officers’ names should be included on annual misconduct summaries that police departments file with the Legislature at the beginning of every session.

The latest decision by the Intermediate Court of Appeals, in February, said yes, they do need to include the names because, well, that is the law. Most of the counties had been doing that anyway.

The State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, the statewide union that had been fighting Civil Beat and the city of Honolulu in court all these years, had until last month to file an appeal, which would have kicked it up to the Supreme Court and who knows how many more months before a decision.

What??? Had SHOPO seen the error of its ways now that the union is being run by people who are much more public-relations savvy, reasonable and in tune with the public vibe?

But … nah.

“Our counsel recommended trying to amend the law itself to provide additional privacy protections to our officers,” SHOPO president Bobby Cavaco told The Blog last week. “Also, the Board decided it’s not worth expending any further money on this case, and our ultimate remedy lies with the Legislature.”

Sigh. Hopefully it won’t take another 10 years to sort it out.

Blanket coverage: The state House has a new social media policy that appears to have been inspired in part by online threats and hate speech that followed a dispute earlier this year between Rep. Jeanne Kapela and Rep. Elijah Pierick over her House invocation. Long story short: She said some things he didn’t like and he riled up his social media followers who then took out after her on their social media.

“Members shall not use their official accounts to disparage other members or individuals, and shall not encourage, support or invite disparagement or threats by commenters,” the policy states. “This includes posts on a member’s own official account page as well as posts on other social media pages using the member’s official account.”

GOP Rep. Gene Ward has problems with parts of the new policy, which he equates to a blanket “placed over the mouths and cameras of legislators in the name of fairness.” He takes issue with a section that prohibits altering or editing content from its original form: “For brevity and most effective messaging the majority of your videos have been edited to some degree.”

Ward also doesn’t care for this section: “Content critical of policy may not be personalized or politicized, and may not be used to disparage other members, other individuals or political parties.”

He argues that it restricts a legislator’s ability to inform the public of what is happening “by making them liable for how people respond to the information.”

The Blog does have to wonder how that will work, especially now that elections are in full swing. Aren’t campaigns all about talking stink (aka disparaging) your opponents, current policy or the other political party on social media?

A June 7 memo from House Speaker Scott Saiki to members says the policy took effect immediately and will apply until reps adopt a permanent one.

Money trouble: The state Campaign Spending Commission this week fined four businesses that made campaign contributions to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi and several state lawmakers last year.

Private businesses that make at least $500 in donations during a two-year election period need to register as with the commission.

The commission identified 25 companies that did not file organizational reports after making donations last year, but staff were able to get most of them to file the correct paperwork after follow-up phone calls, executive director Kristin Izumi-Nitao said during a commission meeting on Wednesday.

received the heftiest fine of $1,150. Blangiardi’s campaign reported receiving $2,000 from the business in May 2023. 

Don Huang, the firm’s owner, said in an interview that he made the donation after receiving a flyer in the mail asking for campaign contributions. 

“I did not ever know that there was supposed to be follow up,” Huang said. “If you just donate, you donate.”

Huang rifled through his papers and found a letter dated May 10 “which I’m just reading right now,” he said.

“I thought it was just a verification, God dang! This is the Campaign Spending Commission. This looks pretty legal. There’s a docket number and everything,” he said.

Huang was apologetic and said he didn’t intend to violate any rules or avoid disclosure. But he said he would call the commission.

Setting the record straight: The Honolulu Star-Advertiser recently dumped its membership in the Associated Press which means it doesn’t get the venerable wire service anymore or publish AP stories. Not long after that, the AP approached Civil Beat with a partnership deal that allows AP to distribute Civil Beat stories in exchange for us publishing some AP stories, mainly those written by Hawaii staff.

Still, it was a bit of a shock to read Richard Borreca’s column in the Sunday paper crediting AP with what was really work by Civil Beat’s Chad Blair.

“According to calculations performed by the Associated Press, in this election year, just 279 candidates filed for office. By way of comparison, in 2020 there were 330 and in 2022 Hawaii saw more than 400 candidates filing to run for office,” Borreca wrote.

He went on to discuss specific races that he (wrongly) concluded “the AP reported” were shaping up a certain way.

Just for the record, it was Chad and Blaze Lovell who researched and analyzed the numbers for various election cycles.

Other news outlets that picked up the AP story carried this tagline at the bottom:

“This story was originally published by ������Ƶ and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.”

The Blog has to wonder where Borreca actually saw the story. But it’s kind of hard to miss the credit either way.