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Deserted islands: A new report on the state of local news came out last week and sadly 127 newspapers went bye-bye last year. That left nearly 55 million Americans with no access to local news, the  says. Those areas are known as news deserts.

The report also includes a good writeup on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s new owner, Carpenter Media Group, which has been gobbling up small news outlets all over the country in the last year — a “meteoric pace,” the report calls it, that has made Carpenter the sixth largest newspaper company in the U.S. with 130 newspapers under its corporate belt.

So why then, The Sunshine Blog has to wonder, is Carpenter laying off journalists right and left, including here in Hawaii as we are hearing this week. Dennis Francis, the longtime head of Oahu Publications that owns the Star-Advertiser and most of the neighbor island newspapers, told  that layoffs “strengthen the company’s financial future.”

Seriously? But what about the community? Maybe they should buy less and save more.

Carpenter has been whacking journalists (and newspaper carriers) since it took over operations from Black Press in March, including the entire reporting staff at West Hawaii Today. This week six more Honolulu journalists got their pink slips, including two veteran photographers — Cindy Ellen Russell and Craig Kojima — and longtime religion reporter Pat Gee. Also on the hit list: Stanley Lee, Richard Couch and Jeremy Nitta. At least six other non-newsroom employees also were let go.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser Guild sent around a scathing indictment of the new owners on Tuesday, saying “These losses cut deep at our ability to continue serving communities across Hawaii.”

The Guild contends Carpenter is following “a pattern” of buying a bunch of newspapers followed by deep cuts at the same papers. Similar blood-letting has happened in Washington state and Oregon in recent months where Carpenter Media Group has landed.

“Corporate leadership promised to invest in us and give us new tools to serve our communities,” the Guild said. “At the time, our union expressed cautious optimism that new management could offer a new opportunity to revitalize. Less than a year into CMG’s leadership, it increasingly appears that talk about valuing workers and investing in our workforce were empty platitudes.”

“While cutting staff reduces costs in the short term, it inevitably limits our ability to cover our community and leads to more disappointed customers canceling subscriptions. We’ve seen this time and again. As workers at news organizations around the country continue to labor around the clock with limited resources, corporate vampires continue to suck us dry.”

Great Halloween line.

The Blog is interested to see what reaction, if any, the other unions in this most union of states will have. Solidarity is easier said than done, right?

At least one civic leader is speaking out. “It’s a corporate layoff and it’s as cold as can be,” former Gov. Neil Abercrombie, now on the University of Hawaii Board of Regents, told Hawaii News Now.

The Blog is eagerly awaiting the appearance of our two favorite Oahu Publications news anchors, James and Rose, whose computer-generated selves read the news (badly) every week for The Garden Island, the company’s newspaper on Kauai. Avatars are the perfect employee — they can work long hours and don’t need money for food or rent. Surely James and Rose can lend a hand here on Oahu.

Sticker shock: Most of us know by now that or use public equipment to promote or oppose political candidates.

So a sharp-eyed reader was surprised to see this Trump campaign sticker on a Honolulu Board of Water Supply truck near the Kahala Mall on Wednesday. She took a picture that soon landed in The Blog’s inbox.

We reached out to the BWS to see what’s up. Kathleen Pahinui, spokeswoman for the Board of Water Supply, also knows what everyone except perhaps the hapless driver of this particular BWS truck knows.

“That’s a violation of city ethics and we can’t have that,” Pahinui said. “We need to know which truck.”

She said it may or may not have been placed there by an employee. Someone walking by could have stuck it on the side of the truck without the employee noticing.

“We don’t know for sure, all we know is we’ve got to get it off the truck now,” she said.

Here’s the picture. And a clue. The person likes sunflower seeds too, and the Zesty Ranch flavor to boot. The Blog will let you decide if this perpetrator has good taste in either politics or food.

Letting the light shine in: The chamber level of the Hawaii State Capitol, where staff, visitors, lawmakers, the governor and LG park their vehicles, has long been a dank and dark place to visit. It doesn’t exactly scream “E komo mai.”

That’s why The Blog was very pleasantly surprised to see the Diamond Head side of the chamber level (fancy words for “basement”) lit up as bright as day this week. It was so illuminated that The Blog almost had to wear shades.

The Department of Accounting and General Services tells us the change is permanent and the Ewa side of the basement is to get the same treatment once funding is secured. For now, though, that side is still operational if a wee bit dark.

Meanwhile, work continues on the reflecting pools above and elsewhere in the Big Square Building on Beretania while the Legislature is between sessions.

A sunny day at OHA: The Office of Hawaiian Affairs Board of Trustees has decided not to ask the Legislature to let it out from under the Sunshine Law, as Civil Beat’s Blaze Lovell reported was on the table at OHA’s meeting on Thursday.

The proposed bill would have granted a blanket exemption to the Board of Trustees from a law meant to keep meetings open to the public. Had it cleared the board, it would have gone to the Legislature in 2025 for further consideration.

Still, the decision to let the public continue to be full participants in OHA meetings was not made until considerable handwringing had occurred.

OHA CEO Stacy Ferreira said that the board can’t operate effectively under the Sunshine Law.

“It just does not allow our board to effectively and efficiently address the issues that come across not just the board’s table, but through the front door every day,” she said at a preliminary hearing Wednesday.

Chairwoman Carmen Hulu Lindsey said the Sunshine Law prevented more than two trustees traveling to Kauai to meet with community leaders over iwi kupuna in Wainiha.

Supporters also pointed to the Legislature, which is exempt from the open meetings law and allowed to deliberate behind closed doors.

The Blog thanks those members of the community who stood up for transparency and accountability.

“Just because the Legislature does it, doesn’t make it right,” Maui County Council member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez said on Wednesday.

Duh.

At Thursday’s meeting, she said OHA and the trustees should take the time to learn the ins and outs of the law, and that not doing so was akin to a “child refusing to eat vegetables.”

Lu Ann Lankford-Faborito also testified against the Sunshine Law exemption.

“Discussion outside the public feels a little secretive,” she said.

Trustee Keli‘i Akina said OHA needs to build trust in the community and in the Legislature in order to move bills and gain support for proposals.

“Embracing the Sunshine Law tells people we want to be transparent, we want to be open,” Akina said. “Rejecting the Sunshine Law tells them the opposite.”

Trustee Keoni Souza voted in favor of the bill on Wednesday but voted against the proposal on Thursday. While he still supports seeking exemptions from the Sunshine Law, he said testimony over the last two days swayed his vote.

“I feel passionate about certain things until someone brings something to light,” he said.

Which just goes to show that more people need to speak up about the things that matter in Hawaii. It looks like sometimes the powers that be actually listen.