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In the words of Bob Dylan, “The times they are a-changin’” at the Hawaii State Legislature with Kim Coco Iwamoto’s unseating of House Speaker Scott Saiki during the 2024 primary election.

Speaker Saiki was first elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives in 1994 and became House Majority Leader in 2013. He then was elected by his House peers to be speaker in May 2017.

Under Speaker Saiki’s guidance and working with Senate leadership, there has been both much progress and setbacks.

Hawaii has seen the adoption of voting by mail but still sees dismal voter turnout rates. Hawaii adopted an equal pay measure, but a shows that women only make 86 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

One of the biggest scandals during Speaker Saiki’s tenure was the arrests and guilty pleas of then-House member Ty Cullen and then-Senator Kalani English for bribery in 2022, which led Speaker Saiki to create the much lauded to make recommendations around corruption, lobbying, ethics and campaign spending.

While some changes were made based on the commission’s recommendations, these changes stopped short of providing insight or transparency into the Legislature, i.e., the People’s House.

Sunshine Is Key

Advocates have often lamented that it is difficult for the public to know how our elected officials are doing the work of The People in the People’s House, given the lack of sunshine and transparency.

Further, it appears that decision-making power at the Legislature is concentrated in the hands of a few elected officials, which is contrary to the democratic principle of rule by the majority.

This lack of transparency by which our elected officials act and the lack of democratic norms have led to a disengaged and jaded public. We see this in our abysmally low voter turnout and low public engagement during the legislative session.

A Special Commentary Project

Civil Beat opinion writers are closely following efforts to bring more transparency and accountability to state and local government — at the Legislature, the county level and in the media. Help us by sending ideas and anecdotes to sunshine@civilbeat.org.

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This must change. Hawaii’s elected government cannot and should not continue to function in the dark with the people not knowing the actions being taken by our elected officials in our House.

With a new speaker of the House soon to be selected by the House membership, the members of the Legislature — both House and Senate — can change how business is conducted to create more transparency and let in the sunshine!

Proposed Changes

While there are a myriad of changes that both chambers may and should adopt, three simple changes will shine a light on the workings of the legislature and allow the public to be able to participate more meaningfully in the process.

One, each committee should make all written testimony it receives available for public review at the same time as the testimony is made available to committee members, and at least 22 hours before the hearing, and at least two hours before hearing for “late” testimony.

There may be a logistical burden on committee staff to always post timely testimony in advance of hearings, which hopefully will ease with better technology and/or increased staffing.

Often, written testimony is not made available to the public, including legislators on the committee, when a committee is in session. This makes it difficult to prepare to address concerns of other testifiers and/or legislators when information is not provided. Making written testimony timely available will promote a more informed public hearing and prepared testifiers.

Two, fiscal committees should not be referred bills not containing or impacting fiscal matters. Currently, almost every single bill is referred to House Finance Committee and Senate Ways and Means Committee, and if a bill moves to conference committee, House Finance or Senate Ways and Means must sign-off on a bill even if it not have any fiscal implications.

Often, good bills having no fiscal implications die due to this extra hurdle of having to go through a fiscal committee. For example, changes to the Sunshine Law will not necessarily have fiscal impact and should, therefore, not be referred to any fiscal committees.

Three, chairs of committees should not have the unilateral authority to not hold hearings on a bill and/or table a bill after a hearing. This is too much power for any one person to have, which may result in deals being made behind closed doors, horse trading, and influence peddling.

This is not democracy. The unilateral authority of committee chairs to kill bills needs to end.

The Hawaii House of Representatives and Senate can and should adopt, at least, the three suggested changes for the next legislative session for more transparency at the Hawaii State Legislature. It should not be status quo and business as usual at the People’s House. Change is here.