Is The Sunshine Law Working For Oahu’s Neighborhood Boards?
Neighborhood board members are frustrated at restrictions on what they can talk about at their meetings.
Hawaii’s Sunshine Law is again causing consternation, this time at the local level on Oahu as neighborhood board members struggle to figure out what they can and can’t talk about at their monthly meetings.
Most recently, board members have been scratching their heads over a seven-page letter to the Neighborhood Commission from the state Office of Information Practices, which oversees open meetings and public records laws. The letter, in response to a request for guidance from a board member, has proved confusing, several board members say, especially when it comes to talking about important issues occurring in the community.
The situation has prompted Patrick Smith, who chairs the Nuuanu-Punchbowl Neighborhood Board, to propose a resolution for discussion on Monday at the Neighborhood Commission meeting that would ask the Legislature to exempt the local boards from the Sunshine Law.
Smith said he’s proposing the resolution in his role on a commission subcommittee that oversees boards’ rules, not on behalf of the Nuuanu board.
The meeting is set for 6 p.m. Monday at the commission’s office and will be livestreamed. People can submit testimony in advance as well. .
Oahu has 33 neighborhood boards that are overseen by the Neighborhood Commission. The commission is guided by , which lays out the administrative and operating rules for the boards.
鈥淭he purpose of this neighborhood plan and the neighborhood boards is to increase and assure effective citizen participation in the decisions of government,鈥 the plan says.
Smith and other board members said they’re concerned that the Sunshine Law, as laid out in OIP’s letter, is squelching effective citizen participation because it’s so convoluted and rigid they can’t have honest and efficient discussions about community concerns as they’re occurring.
They believe the law prohibits them from discussing things that come up at meetings but haven’t been specified on an agenda. Representatives of city and state agencies regularly attend the board meetings to give status updates, but board members can’t ask them about, say, broken water lines or even crime in the neighborhood unless it’s specifically on the agenda, they say.
“The letter from OIP puts severe constraints on board members,” Smith said Thursday.
Bob Armstrong, a member of the Downtown-Chinatown Neighborhood Board, said members are “very distressed” by the OIP letter.
“It seems to stifle what I would call the democratic process,” Armstrong said. “It seems to be cutting us off at the knees right now. If you can’t respond to your own neighborhood cop particularly here in Chinatown, we need to rethink the process.”
Smith pointed out that neighborhood board members are essentially community activists who provide a link between the neighborhood and government agencies. “But they’re not city officials, they’re not covered by the ethics commission, they don’t submit financial statements,” he said.
Moreover, he noted, the boards don’t make decisions — they’re purely advisory. They don’t “make decisions about what roads to pave or we can’t tell the cops you need to put more officers on the street.”
Brian Black, executive director of the Public First Law Center, which closely watches open meetings and public records law, said the boards have more leeway to discuss issues that come up abruptly than they seem to think.
“Unlike other government boards, neighborhood boards have a special exception from the Sunshine Law that allows them to discuss matters raised by members of the public at a meeting, even though it is not on the agenda,” Black said in an email. “The exception does not permit the neighborhood board to make a decision until a later meeting when the issue can be placed on the agenda 鈥 giving notice to everyone that the neighborhood board will discuss it, in case other community members have something to share.”
He said the boards also have another special exception that allows discussion of 鈥渦nanticipated鈥 matters that require prompt discussion 鈥渇or public health, welfare, and safety鈥 purposes.
“If you can’t respond to your own neighborhood cop particularly here in Chinatown, we need to rethink the process.”
Bob Armstrong, Downtown-Chinatown Neighborhood Board
Black thinks there’s no justification for an exemption from the Sunshine Law for the neighborhood boards. “If it is an urgent public safety matter or something unexpectedly raised by a community member, exceptions already exist that allow discussion by neighborhood boards,” Black said.
Armstrong and Smith said they support the Sunshine Law for other boards and commissions, particularly those with power to spend public money or adopt rules that affect the public. Armstrong said he’d like to see the law expanded to the Legislature, which is totally exempt from the law.
But, Smith said, the neighborhood boards “are just a group of citizens there to get information.”
Smith said he’s spoken to a couple of legislators who, he hopes, will introduce a bill this session to exempt the boards. He thinks the Neighborhood Commission could effectively mandate similar open meetings rules by making that explicit in the Neighborhood Plan.
Otherwise, he said, neighborhood boards are going to continue to ignore the OIP requirements, as they’ve been doing for years.
“It’s like one of those laws that’s so restrictive that it doesn’t make sense to people so they mostly just ignore it,” he said. “The law is so restrictive even good people don’t follow it.”
Read the OIP letter to the Neighborhood Commission:
