Poinography!

From an Advertiser op-ed piece today:

if we see record gasoline prices in our neighborhoods and then hear of record oil company profits, the natural conclusion is that oil profits came from our neighborhoods.

But where do those record profits come from? In Exxon’s case, more than 75 percent came from foreign countries. Only 10 percent were actually derived from gasoline sales inside the United States. It seems the bulk of their profits are made in the global market, and not in U.S. neighborhoods.

While many think oil is controlled by a handful of powerful Americans, the industry is global. Of the top 10 companies in the world, two are American. It is brokers from China and India who are escalating global prices by agreeing to pay $124 per barrel.

And does the word “record” mean “excessive?” A good way to gauge excessiveness is to examine a company’s profit margins. Exxon has only an 11 percent profit margin. Chevron is even lower at 8 percent. These are modest by any standard. In contrast, consider that Microsoft enjoys a profit margin of more than 32 percent.

Really? Where’d those company profit margin figures come from? If that information is available to the public, then I’ll ask, again, why won’t he PUC release aggregated data for Hawaii refiners?

Anyway, I don’t exactly feel better knowing that Microsoft has a 32% profit margin compared to oil companies with 8-12%. After all, consumers buy orders of magnitude more petroleum than computer operating systems… and it’s far easier to assume/maintain a lifestyle without Microsoft products than one without petroleum products.

No, not my dog, Perl, but my preferred scripting language, perl.

As I mentioned a few days back, I thought it would be useful to be able to have a record of every vote cast by each legislator. The data are available now, but they are organized by bill, i.e. the Capitol website does not offer the votes sorted by Legislator. Instead, you’d need to open over 6,000 web pages to see what action a particular legislator took on every specific bill! Ugh.

I have spent much of the weekend (hey, gimme a break, my scripting skill is a bit rusty after about 2 years away from the game!) devising (and, of course, debugging and refining) a script to download all of the bill status pages and to pull out the voting information for each legislator. There’s still room for improvement, of course, but this version of the script gets the job done. For example, somebody may want to modify the script to deal with resolutions, don’t ask me why…

The output of the script is raw text, so the files look better viewed in a wide terminal window and/or in a small font where there are less linewrap issues. If you want to slurp the data into something “prettier,” then go nuts and share the results…

Assuming all is well, you may right-click on this link and select “download.” Then you’ll need to unzip the file. Inside is the script I wrote, the license that goes with it, the complete concatenated histories of all 2007-2008 regular session legislation, and two directories (Reps and Senators) containing the actual votes cast by each legislator as produced by my script. I did not include voting records for First Readings, because those are pro forma and, so far as I know, those data would only reflect ayes and excused votes. If you see a measure that has no information listed that means either the bill was never put to a vote by a committee where the legislator is a member, or the first committee voted to hold the bill and the legislator was not a member of the first committee. Also, veto override actions may not show up correctly (if at all).

If you share, use or modify the script, you must observe the terms of the GPL license. If you share or repost the data generated by the script, then please acknowledge my work and include a link to this blog. The data are only as accurate as the information available on the Capitol website as of May 11, 2008.

ENJOY!

Remember the strange scenario I wrote about some time ago regarding the disputed election results for the MEC? Well, the Molokai Times now reports that the “pro-development” faction of the not-fully-populated board has held a closed-door meeting to amend its bylaws so that the (final) annual election to fill seats on the board would be cancelled. This, according to the president, because new members would not have enough time to become familiar with the job before the MEC is dissolved in December. Riiiiight.

The majority members on the EC board, all of whom supported development at La’au Point, decided several months ago that their meetings would be closed to the public. The same four members who opposed canceling the election also opposed closing the meetings to the public.

Canceling the election would have nothing to do with the fact that, after Molokai Ranch closed down all of its operations rather than face continued community opposition, the balance of the board could would almost certainly shift to the side that is opposed to the Ranch and its La’au Point development scheme. No, sir, that’s clearly not the motivation to cancel the next election…

An Advertiser report on the Iolani Palace occupation concludes with this though-provoking passage:

Despite widespread media reports, [”head of state’] Kahau said it is incorrect to call the Hawaiian Kingdom Government a “sovereignty group” or even “protesters.”

“We’re not protesting against anything. … We’re not a sovereignty group,” she said. “We are the seat of government for the Hawaiian Kingdom. We are here assuming and resuming the Hawaiian seat of government and we are proceeding as the seat of government.”

Officers from various state law enforcement agencies have been stationed on the palace grounds since members of the Hawaiian Kingdom Government have been at the palace, Thielen said.

The Advertiser seems to be splitting the middle. They don’t refer to the Hawaiian Kingdom Government as “the seat of government,” but neither do they label them protesters or a sovereignty group. I guess I’m in the same spot as the Advertiser, then…

Anyway, what’s the end game here? Sitting on the Palace lawn under a canopy with a public address system doesn’t seem like a feasible form of interim (much less long-term) “government.” Perhaps unintentionally, the final paragraph of the article adds another layer of irony, i.e. the HKG occupation of the Palace is now itself (re-)occupied by representatives of a rival “seat of government.”

I don’t blog about national politics, but I’ll note a passage from this Star-Bulletin article about attempts in Congress to lower the price of gasoline.

Senate Democrats introduced an energy package this week that ignores the calls for the tax holiday.

Instead, the proposal calls for a windfall-profits tax on oil companies and a rollback of $17 billion in oil industry tax breaks. It also would impose federal penalties on energy price gouging and calls for stopping oil deliveries into the government’s emergency reserve.

Hmmm. How would Congress define “gouging?” I note that, unlike the PIMAR scheme here in Hawaii, this proposal does not mention any reporting of the data gathered from the energy companies. It would sure be a bummer if this federal proposal, assuming that it will not provide for any reporting, were to supercede the Hawaii program.

I don’t know exactly what is wrong with him, but Representative Nakasone was absent for most of the 2008 regular session. It’s possible, but not likely, that I missed the explanation (if one was given), but I wonder if his constituents even know what’s going on. Even when Nakasone is healthy he always seemed to studiously avoid any attention, so I can understand how maybe this just wasn’t noticed by very many people outside the Capitol.

Some of the (more ominous) things I’ve heard suggest that Nakasone may not be able to serve another term. If he were to resign before the end of his term, the ““Bev Harbin Law” would require the Democrats to supply Governor Lingle a list of three Democrats (with at least six months tenure in the Party) who live in his district from which she would appoint one of the three to complete his term.

I realize it’s a grey area when deciding to discuss (or not) the private health issues of a public figure. It both is and is not “any of our business.” Anyway, I’ve kicked over the anthill.

UPDATE: KHON picks up the story and discusses other members and their absenteeism.

Hmmmm. The Star-Bulletin runs a story on the business page today about a bad quarter for Tesoro.

Tesoro’s refining margin last quarter at its Campbell Industrial Park facility in Kapolei fell to a negative $1.49 a barrel versus a gain of $3.94 a barrel a year ago. The refining margin is the spread between the cost of crude oil and price of refined products.

The Hawaii facility’s yield, or the total number of barrels of refined products of gas, jet fuel, diesel fuel and heavy oils, fell 18.8 percent to 69,000 barrels a day from 85,000 barrels a day.

Meanwhile, the PUC staff tasked with providing us “transparency” still do not report the weighted gross margins from Tesoro and Chevron, because it is “questionable” if they could maintain confidentiality…

As bogus as that argument may be, the Protective Order that (in their view) supports the PUC policy of not releasing the refiner margin data contains this paragraph:

WHEREAS, under HRS (5 486J-6(b), no data or information submitted to the Commission shall be deemed confidential if the person submitting the information or data has made it public;

Amazingly, even with gas prices around $4/gallon, Tesoro is losing money. Publishing the gross margin data at a time like this would tend to dispel any impression that there is gouging going on. Still, the PUC withholds the data. Go figure.

A great, albeit obfuscating, soundbite from Senator Slom in this Star-Bulletin story about the forthcoming findings of the Senate Investigative Committee on the Hydrogen Investment Capital Special Fund Management Contract Award.

All the senators agree that Liu broke the law, but there’s no evidence he did it for personal gain, said Sen. Sam Slom (R, Diamond Head-Hawaii Kai).

“Either there is a tremendous, wide-ranging conspiracy to allow the director to violate the law for whatever purpose, or you’ve got a bunch of high-profile and low-profile employees that really were moronic in their actions and their responsibilities,” Slom said. “I believe they were morons.”

I reckon both parts of that either/or statement are true. Heh.

META: Why is there no testimony published on the Capitol website for that committee? There is plenty of video (not gavel-to-gavel, of course) on the Governor’s In Case You Missed It website, however.

Remember the brouhaha about the drug testing clause in the teachers’ collective bargaining agreement that the Governor said would have to happen in order for the teachers to get their pay raise? Well, it seems that the next play will be from the Governor. The Star-Bulletin reports that budget passed by the legislature did not set aside any funds to pay for the testing.

Excluded from the schools budget were requests for $523,723 for random and reasonable-suspicion drug tests of teachers scheduled to start June 30 …

Was Lingle bluffing? Will the BOE cave in and “find” the money in its budget?

I just noticed that the bill status pages on the Capitol website have been modified to include links at the top connecting to all drafts, committee reports, and testimony. Not the same as the “embedded” presentation style I had proposed, but incrementally better than before. On a related note, have a look at this post from the House Clerk explaining how the “paperless” option went this session. In short, not bad!

Finally, even though it is not a slow weekend, I am beginning to dabble in a perl script that will generate an account of how each legislator voted on each piece of legislation. It’s possible to get this information bill-by-bill, but I want to be able to find it legislator-by-legislator. I mused about this project previously, you may remember.

Yup, three makes it a trend.

We see yet another Hawaii Reporter post where a Republican named Andy Smith announces that he is running for the seat being vacated by Democrat Josh Green (who will run for Senate). Like the candidates I wrote about this past weekend (Shields and Hong), Smith makes no mention of his party affiliation in his announcement. Nor does Smith mention that he lost a campaign for a House seat representing Hilo in 2002.

Interesting that, like Shields, Smith is also going to campaign on the health care scarcity and certificate of need issues. All indications are that those are going to be “hot” issues on the neighbor islands—or, at least, “hot” according to Republican campaign strategists…

Carrying out the ideas to improve the bill digest I wrote about previously, I have taken the liberty of amending the way the public information about legislation is served.

The Capitol server does it like this (if you had first selected all the radio buttons on the search box before clicking “go”). From there you need to make an additional click to make it to the status page. You’d need to go back and forth from the search results to the history page to follow a bill step-by-step. It’s okay, but I thought I could do better.

My amended form of presenting these data is here. The bill status and the links to all the publicly available information (drafts, committee reports, testimony, hearing notices, and floor comments) are all on one page. If the Capitol presented the information like this, there would really be no need for a digest to be created at crossovers and final reading. Legislators (and the media/public, too) could simply open the bill status pages via the Capitol wireless network or Public Access Room and read as much or as little as they wanted or needed to.

Sorry, if you’re not a wonk, you may have no idea what I’m talking about. Even if you’re a wonk, you may not care. Heh.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that the Senate floor comments are not included. That’s because even if the Senate Journals are available in electronic form (and I’m not sure that they are), I haven’t discovered their location on the Capitol website. Also, I left out all of the Conference Meeting notices—I got lazy after an hour of html-ing…

You wouldn’t know it from reading her post at the Hawaii Reporter, but a woman named Jan Shields is a Republican who plans to run against Senator Roz Baker of Maui. Shields is best known in political circles for her lobbying on behalf of the Association for Improved Healthcare on Maui, a group advocating for another hospital on Maui and against the Certificate of Need process that stands in the way of that.

I sent her an email, and she promptly responded:

I am running as a republican. Many of my issues are not partisan, such as the hospital issue, education and infrastructure.

I feel strongly that with the incumbent in office, we will never get hospitals on Maui. We are just not getting the kind of strong representation that we need for Maui in the senate.

I see a trend here. When Ted Hong announced his candidacy on Hawaii Reporter he did not mention that he is running as a Republican either.

… Hey, I think I hear Eric Ryan clearing his throat! Heh.

Governor Lingle may try to extend the term of Kitty Lagareta on the University of Hawaii Board of Regents, even though the Senate did not consent to her nomination for a second term. The Star-Bulletin and Advertiser report that Lingle thinks this is allowable; as if it falls into a grey area. I am not a lawyer, but I disagree.

Lingle said yesterday that she thought the Senate’s vote was “a big mistake,” and went on to say that she believes Lagareta will not have to leave the board, which oversees the management of the state’s public higher-education system.

“She is a holdover, and she will be able to continue serving,” Lingle said. State law allows regents to hold over or serve after the expiration of their terms “until the member’s successor has been appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate.”

But the state Constitution says regents must be approved by the Senate.

Actually, tthat’s some selective quotation of the “holdover” provision of the law:

Every member may serve beyond the expiration date of the member’s term of appointment until the member’s successor has been appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate in accordance with article X, section 6 of the state constitution.

That section of the Constitution specifies that:

No person who has been nominated for appointment to any office and whose appointment has not received the consent of the senate shall be eligible to an interim appointment thereafter to such office.

So, since Lagareta was nominated and did not receive the consent of the Senate, she can’t serve again unless she obtains consent of the Senate. Tatibouet, on the other hand, was never rejected by the Senate, so I interpret that to mean that she could remain in her post.

Okay, I’ll stipulate that the Constitution speaks only of “interim” appointments and does not explicitly address a person serving beyond his or her normal term of appointment. However, I think it is clear that the end result in this instance would be the same and the framers’ intent of the “no service after consent is withheld” language is plain. Lagareta is pau.

Stacy Higa has a new post on his blog where he reiterates his intent to run for Mayor and again seeks to clear his name. For good measure, Higa also impugns the integrity of the plaintiff.

The case in question is far from over. No one knows if any judgment has been made. If there were any rulings then I can say that they do not involve me and would not be the result of my actions. Although a judge has sealed the case, it is a matter of public record that the County has not written any checks to anyone. When people look into this Plaintiff’s history, there will be some startling information. I think that is the reason why the case was sealed. It is very common for people to sue the County for frivolous reasons. They are hoping for easy money during an election year. It won’t happen this time. This claim has no merit, and I am fighting to get this corrected. As an elected official, I have always fought to protect the County, and I still am trying to do that.

I welcome the opportunity to answer any additional questions posted here.

So far as I can tell, Higa still does not have any answers to the “what’s going on” questions, and, even if he did have answers, the gag order would prevent him from discussing it. So, he welcomes the opportunity to continue his denials. Good luck with that.

I was once again dutifully plodding through another Hawaii Reporter post today … this one featuring a legislative staffer bootlicking naming the best Representative, best Senator, blah blah blah. Yawn. But wait, there also was this, described as the ” top rumor:”

Allegedly on the night of First Crossover, two female representatives were in the women’s restroom of the Capitol fourth floor, one of which was drunk and exceedingly violent, having followed the other into the restroom to challenge the other why she had voted no on a measure regarding Smart Growth, and had consistently shown a record of voting no on other bills introduced or supported by that representative.

The discussion apparently ended with the drunken representative shouting, “You’re nothing to me! You’re insignificant!” while the other fled for safety, fearing for her safety. [sic] Furthermore, rumors persist that just days earlier in a caucus meeting, the same two representatives had an unusually shrill ad hominem clash behind closed doors over a bill that involved a legislative protocol fund passed by the Finance Committee which had no appropriations inserted in it, suggesting that bad blood was already in play.

Regarding the incident on the night of First Crossover, apparently no police report was filed and the matter was supposedly dealt with internally by the Speaker of the House with no public investigation made known. Whether the incident occurred or not remains to be seen, but two things remain certain: there are surveillance cameras all over the State Capitol premises, and one of them had to record the events that happened on that night. It might be interesting if the Department of Public Safety kept video records from that night – what would we see?

CCTV inside the women’s restroom? I doubt it. A police report or public investigation for a verbal skirmish? I would not expect that, either.

Hmmm. An argument in a caucus meeting means that these two are members of the same party. The legislative protocol fund legislation was introduced by de Gracia’s boss, Representative Cabanilla (who could charitably be described as insignificant, especially to/by a more powerful legislator). I think there may be enough information here for me to try to deduce the “drunk” legislator involved, although that will require a close reading of the First Crossover journal. Only a wonk would take on that task…

I’m on it! Heh. Of course, if any reader can assist me in this task, I’d be grateful.

Well, according to DePledge, another attempt to oust Speaker Say has failed and the 2008 regular session is pau. Now we wait to see which of the bills become law and which are vetoed.

I went sailing again tonight (a special fund-raiser race to send the UH Sailing Team to the NCAA Championships), but within a few days I do intend to write something about the Iolani Palace action of this week. Stand by.

Okay, the supplemental budget has passed. It includes money for the “winners” of the zero-sum Grant In Aid struggle. After the Advertiser reported about the secretive process used to award grants in previous years, the secret sub-committee (of one!) that decided on these matters in the House was repealed. Instead, the House and Senate jointly accepted public testimony on every GIA application. So far, so good. However, that testimony was taken on March 8 (and March 12). Unfortunately, those events were three (and seven) days after the Finance Committee voted on its draft of the budget—including its first attempt to award GIA funds. Ooops?

A few weeks later, here is what the Ways and Means Committee had to say about GIAs .

Hawaii’s grant-in-aid program under chapter 42F, Hawaii Revised Statutes, provides critical funding to nonprofit organizations that provide important services in the community. Your Committee is mindful that millions of dollars appropriated for grant-in-aid applicants in fiscal year 2007-2008 have not been released. However, many of these nonprofit organizations provide necessary services throughout Hawai‘i efficiently and at a lower cost.

This legislative session, $47 million in operating grants-in-aid and $110 million in capital improvement grants-in-aid were requested. The vast majority of the applications came from worthy organizations in sincere need of support to sustain valuable programs for their constituents and our community. Understanding the State’s budgetary constraints, your Committee provided $4.3 million for operating grants-in-aid (less than 10 per cent of what was requested) and $9.8 million in capital improvement project grants-in-aid (8 per cent of what was requested).

In both the House and Senate committees a draft budget was, as usual, presented as a fait accompli. There were no line-by-line debates of which GIAs in the drafts were the worthy. There were certainly no application-by-application debates comparing all of the GIA applications to each other. Not that I expected anything like that to happen… Rather, the committee chairs (with/or the committee staff) made these decisions in private and presented them for approval by the members of the committees. Is this really that much more “open” than the previous system? This year the process involved two marathon days of public groveling by non-profits, but I don’t see how the changed process has done much to reassure the public that the new way is better than the old way. Whatever.

I am curious to see if there will be much activity in response to the posts at the Progressive Democrats of Hawaii Blog that offer Democrats a chance to discuss and offer resolutions to be introduced at the Party convention. Usually these things are not discussed in a public forum (although they do ask that non-Party-members refrain from commenting, anybody may read them). Only a few topics have any ideas attached so far, but it’s pretty clear that some thought is going into this effort.

Compare this to the Hawaii GOP fiasco where proposed changes to the platform submitted from the “fringe” of the party were steamrolled by centrists in favor of the status quo. To be fair, it’s a bit early to make a direct comparison, since it may still come to pass that Democrat powers-that-be squash whatever the PDH endorses. But the extra openness at this early stage of the game is refreshing nonetheless.

Okay, it’s nowhere near and dear to me as the Talk Stink v. Harbin episode was, but I’ll be curious to see how this turns out. A blog using the “Keep it Kailua, LLC” name is being sued. By whom, I don’t know. Maybe one of my lawyerly readers can scratch up that information for us? I’m assuming it is another cyber-squatting case, but really have no firm details at this time.

Previously mentioned here and here. A lawsuit like this does not come as a huge surprise…

An Advertiser story (about a scheme at the Honolulu Council to reclaim some of the money set aside to pay salaries of unfilled positions) includes this interesting section:

City officials say they have vacancies because of difficulty attracting qualified candidates and a hiring process that requires exams and takes on average 30 days to complete.

Council member Apo said what often happens is city departments hire contract workers when they can’t find full-time employees.

“We’ve asked the city departments, one by one, to make sense of the situation,” Apo said. “You can’t keep coming in and saying you’re going to fund 30 vacant positions then hire contract workers and pay overtime.”

Since 2001, the city has hired an average of 1,914 contract hires each year to compensate for the vacancies.

Nakamatsu, the director of Human Resources, said a recent audit found that “too many” city positions are filled by contract workers, a situation the city administration seeks to reverse.

Wait, so contract workers don’t have to go through the civil service exam process? Nope. Do contract workers need to be “qualified” in some other way? That’s unclear, but there are plenty of politically-connected (and dubiously-qualified) contract workers who have landed high-paying “temporary” gigs for the city. Are the wages lower for contract workers (i.e. is this a cost-saving thing)? Not always. Do contract workers get the same benefits as the full-timers? Not all of them.

How do I know? That audit referred to by Nakamatsu was a lot more critical than simply finding “too many” contract workers on the payroll. In fact, the title of Chapter 2 is: “The City’s Misuse of Personal Services Contracts Violates the Intent of the City Charter, Lacks Accountability, and Promotes Questionable Contract Practices.”

From the audit, page 20:

Executive departments and agencies attributed their need for contracts exceeding more than one 12-month period or for multiple, consecutive contract renewals to the administration’s freezing of civil service hiring for vacant positions and approving only contract hires; the need for retirees’ expertise to assist regular staff; the desire to use capital improvement funds to pay contract salaries; privatization negotiations; and the centralizing of information technology positions.

Those may be valid reasons to hire contract workers, but not to do so in contravention of the established laws. Check out the stuff about the former councilmembers being hired at wages higher than what they earned in their elected posts, too.

My 10k time this morning was a personal record — good enough for first place in my age group.

The big sailing regatta, on the other hand, was super frustrating due to light and variable winds. My teammate and I are sitting in 25th place out of 28 boats. Ugh. Three more races tomorrow, and more wind is expected. In more breeze capsizes become an issue, and many of the visiting boats come from places known for light winds (Seattle, San Diego, etc.). We need to see those trade winds return.

UPDATED April 27: This morning the forecast is for another day of light and variables, with the trades returning later today or tonight. Phooey!

I am going to sleep really well tonight, I know that much!

3rd Marines 10k 2008

Originally uploaded by poinographer

As a fellow “end-of-alphabetic-lists” person, I can somewhat relate to this unintentionally hilarious post from Kauai County Councilmember Mel Rapozo. In this episode, Rapozo gets the smackdown from the Garden Island News editor. Ooof.

It seems that a fair number of people on Kauai really have a way with unvarnished dismissiveness, No? Heh.

The lingering story that just keeps getting more ugly for Stacy Higa. The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports that Higa has run an ad proclaiming his innocence. A potential candidate for Council is demanding that Higa resign and withdraw from the Mayor’s race. The Council “may” meet in Executive Session to discuss the case. The Corporation Counsel “may” appeal the ruling that awarded the plaintiff $272,000. The other two parties attached to the case (Kiriu and Arakaki) haven’t commented to the media.

It would really be remarkable (and a huge anchor weighing on Higa’s political ambitions) if this whole incident passes by and the public never learns what happened…

Okay, when I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Contrary to my earlier post, the Star-Bulletin now reports that the House is unlikely to try to overturn Governor Lingle’s veto of the “card check” legislation. This retreat comes despite having well over two-thirds voting in favor of the bill at final reading in both chambers. The Governor’s veto message does not raise any issues that were not already known during the prior readings of the bill, so the backtracking in the House is hard for me to see as much more than, well, cowardice. Eh.

In other news, I went sailing again tonight but the wind was so weak that we only got back to the dock a little while ago. So, with other stuff to deal with before bed, I don’t have any more for you folks today, sorry. At least we won the race!

This weekend I have a social function to attend Friday night, I’m entered in another 10k race Saturday morning, and then I’ll be participating in a multi-day sailing regatta that will keep me pretty busy. I still hope to be able to post, but, frankly, my attention will be elsewhere. Hopefully nothing “important” goes down, haha.

Today Ian Lind mentioned the Advertiser story about the conference draft of the reporter/blogger shield law. (previous drafts were analyzed here) Lind writes:

Doug White (www.poinography.com) is quoted as worrying about the different standard for independent bloggers, but the bill’s provisions actually seem quite liberal in this regard. A “public interest” standard has been used to separate substantive blogs from personal blogs. I wonder where they’ll put this strange mix of cats, dogs, sunrises, and occasional news? Don’t worry, morning dogs, I won’t expose your confidential tips.

I realize that Ian may have been pondering that question in jest, but, unless the bill has been amended to delete language that both the Senate and the House had previously endorsed, Lind’s “strange mix” would be automatically granted shield protection simply because he is a former reporter for the Star-Bulletin and a current freelancer for the Honolulu Weekly. I don’t have that type of employment history, and that’s why I am not entirely pleased with what I’ve heard about the bill (keeping in mind that the final draft has not been filed).

For whatever editorial reason, the article quotes only the final two sentences of what I had to say. But, since I have my own blog, my full response to DePledge’s request for comment was as follows:

Derrick,

I am assuming that this is the language that will emerge:

The limitation on compellable testimony established by this section may also be claimed by and afforded to any individual who can demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that: 1) the individual has regularly and materially participated in the reporting or publishing of news or information of substantial public interest for the purpose of dissemination to the general public by means of tangible or electronic media; 2) the position of the individual is materially similar or identical to that of a journalist or newscaster, taking into account the method of dissemination; 3) the interest of the individual in protecting the sources and unpublished information described above is materially similar or identical to the interests of the individuals described in section (a); and 4) the public interest is served by affording the protections of this section in the specific circumstance under consideration.

If that is the language, then:

I would be pleased to have a chance to claim the “shield” privilege, yet I am dismayed that I would need to “demonstrate” that I am worthy of protection. Reporters, in contrast, would not need to demonstrate anything other than their present (or past? go figure) employment status, yet simply because I am unaffiliated with the professional/traditional media I would need to seek the government’s ex post facto okay. The SPJ was understandably concerned about the government establishing (even, at one point, by adopting the Society’s Code) standards in order to be considered a journalist afforded the privilege, and that language (as far as I know) is not part of the final draft. Should this bill become law, however, any blogger who grants anonymity to a source in order to report on the actions of the political or economic elite would have to pause and consider if he or she should expect a truly fair opportunity to demonstrate worthiness. “The public interest” is an uncomfortably vague standard and, ultimately, bloggers that fail (in the courts judgment) to meet that standard would be left in the position of either facing contempt or revealing the anonymous source. That double standard is going to have, as the lawyers might say, a chilling effect on my work when compared to yours.

Thanks for the chance to comment.

Aloha,
Doug

So, DePledge, Lind, and all other current and former “pros” (no matter what their medium is) get the shield coverage automatically. People like me would need to be ready to fight for the protection every time I gave a source anonymity. Furthermore, a source considering talking to a blogger like me would have to consider how likely I would be to prevail and, should I lose, whether I would choose to expose the identity of the source or to become a martyr. That’s fair? I don’t think so. It is better than what exists now, however, and a definite advance for the professional journalists.

Maybe I should just write a single freelance story for whatever local rag would publish it, thereby earn my automatic shield protection, and then “retire” and stick with blogging. Sheesh.

Check out this interesting Maui News article about Long’s lawsuit to stop the development of a Walgreen’s across the street from its Lahaina location. According to the lawsuit, a 24-year old lease says that before another pharmacy is allowed to build on the landowner’s property, Long’s must be given a chance to buy the property first.

The articles says that this type of lease arrangement is “not uncommon.” Huh. That’s news to me. Free market advocates must get twisted in knots over this one; these are private contracts negotiated between a buyer and a seller (the kind of thing free marketers consider inviolate) that are in essence anti-free market… Heh.

What a bummer. The Maui News reports that a bill to exempt PEG (Public, Educational, and Government) cable access from the procurement code died this year when the House Finance Committee heard the bill, voted to amend the bill, and then failed to file the Committee Report and amended bill by the Second Decking deadline.

Sheesh. I know, I know, Committee staff, and especially the Finance Staff, are responsible for handling huge amounts of clerical minutiae under a tight deadline. I was a Committee Clerk for a few years and at deadlines there is a lot of pressure. It’s a staffer’s nightmare, but mistakes are going to happen. But still…

What’s left unanswered by this article, however, is what the failure of this legislation means for the PEG providers we currently know (Olelo, Akaku, etc.). Will the Department award (or has it already awarded) the PEG contracts to new groups?

Nice to see this Star-Bulletin story about a new requirement for lawyers to report to the Judiciary how many hours of pro bono work they provided in 2007. In the past performing the work was only an advisory section of the rules of professional conduct, with no reporting required.

The new rule is already having an impact. Preliminary estimates show that 3,300 attorneys, nearly 47 percent of the lawyers in Hawaii, reported doing pro bono work last year, up from roughly 27 percent when reporting was voluntary. The total hours nearly doubled to about 200,000.

“Requiring people to report, I suppose there’s a little bit of a guilt trip,” said Lyn Flanigan, executive director of the Hawaii State Bar Association. “Putting down a zero makes you think, ‘What can I do?’ And a lot of people did call and say, ‘What can I do?’”

This year’s form did not break down how much pro bono work went to people who could not afford lawyers, as opposed to those who are friends of the attorneys or charitable or educational nonprofit groups, for example. By next year the registration form will be updated to break out the number of hours given to those who cannot afford legal help.

Why are these data not made publicly available? The rule makes them confidential, but I don’t know the process of how the rules are formulated and put in place. It’s as if the Judiciary were trying to mimic the (still silent) PIMAR folks… It’s safe to surmise that some lawyers are contributing far more than 50 hours, while many give few or none.

An effort to gather 40,000 signatures has begun that aims to put a voter initiative on the ballot in November which would pass an ordinance prohibiting “trains or rail” for Honolulu mass transit. The organizers have a website.

Okay, it’s obvious who would pay for a pro-rail initiative, but I’m curious who is going to pay for the petitioning and the advertising to support an anti-rail initiative. I guess we’ll find out.

This makes that Council bill to disclose when City officials spend public money for media campaigns a much more interesting item…

[With a hat tip and an apology to Frank Shepard Fairey for the title inspiration.]

Wow, if only the Democratic Party of Hawaii had such entertaining (and public!) internal disputes! The latest round of bloodletting began in the aftermath of a failed attempt to amend the Hawaii Republican Party platform, to include remove the platform’s support of the Akaka Bill. Eric Ryan’s account of that story is here.

…the battle for the soul of the Republican Party of Hawaii has just begun. We will prevail and we will work to ensure that the G.O.P. will soon be able to promote an agenda that is clearly different than the agenda and record of the Democrats, which have dominated Hawaii for the past 54 years. Even if Linda Lingle and her cronies don’t want us to.

In quick succession, many other Party members amplified and or disputed Ryan’s anti-RINO meme. On Wednesday it was Jimmy Kuroiwa and Dan Douglass in solidarity with Ryan, and a piece by Andrew Walden bemoaning the paucity of anti-Akaka Bill Republican candidates. Then, on Thursday, it was Ed Enos’ turn to respond with a defense of the status quo.

It’s obvious to just about anyone, the Native Hawaiian Plank is a contentious issue internally between many Party members. Perhaps I’ll address the issue specifically at another time.

Translation: Enos punts. However, I also note that Enos strongly implies that that Ryan is the (formally anonymous) creator of the Zero Shibai cartoons.

Next, on Friday we see the first response to Enos from Michael Palcic, and then on Saturday Eric Seabury joined the choir. Now, on Sunday, another critique of Enos and the status quo, from Garry Smith. I reckon it could continue. Let’s hope so.

This is all good for a chuckle if you’re not a Republican Party member, but stalwart Democrats might not want to laugh too loud before considering the huge flood of new Obama voters Party members. What if they actually made an effort to put their stamp on the platform?… Hmmm.

Kinda slim pickings today, so I dug into this Star-Bulletin article about SB 2218 that proposes to use Global Positioning System ankle bracelets to track serial abusers. My first reaction, as a person unusually familiar with GPS performance, was to question the ability of the tracking device to work inside a vehicle. Can it really “see” the sky (and, specifically, 3 of the satellites necessary for a fix) from under the dashboard of a vehicle? I have my doubts.

Anyway, I started to skim the testimony and noticed this sobering comment from the Domestic Violence Action Center:

The only issue we would call attention to in the crafting of this measure is the disclosure of the victims’ residence address to be included as a listed prohibited location. If a victim is hiding, for safety reasons, it would be foolish to inform the abuser in order to protect her through utilization of an electronic monitoring device. Perhaps some research or additional discussion with corrections experts and ot her communities with similar programs could provide the guidance we need to resolve this issue.

Um, yeah, that would be a problem. How can the offender be prohibited from (not to mention, punished for) getting “too close” without first telling the offender where the victim is?

A bit more Google searching quickly yielded a discussion of the technology from a law enforcement publication, although that piece is more focused on parole/probation uses than protective orders. Finally, while searching for information about how well GPS tracking devices work inside vehicles, I came across this story about a harasser who had installed a tracking device on his victim’s vehicle. Yikes!

However, therein may lie a technological solution to the problem described above. Track the offender and the victim. When the two positions are reported less than a minimum distance apart, notify the victim who may then be on the lookout and/or choose to summon the police. After all, the brutal murder last year in Kailua was not at the victim’s residence.

It would appear that legislation that could, a) require financial disclosures from judges; b) prohibit nepotism in state hiring and contracts, and; c) prohibit legislators from entering contracts over $10,000/year with the state, is going to be allowed to die through inaction. Most of the coverage (Hawaii Tribune-Herald, West Hawaii Today, Advertiser and Star-Bulletin) is focused on the House amendment that would “punish” Representative Green, who works as an M.D. for the Hawaii Health Systems Corporation in Kona.

But [Senator] Inouye, D-Hamakua, South Hilo, said West Hawaii residents who have contacted her don’t appreciate the apparent political gamesmanship. Inouye, who is running for Hawaii County mayor, sent Senate Judiciary Chairman Brian Taniguchi a memo asking him not to hear the bill.

“Allowing this measure to advance further through conference would be an affront to the public, who through their letters and e-mails, have made it clear that they view this kind of action as personal and retaliatory politics at their expense,” Inouye said in the April 15 memo. “In short, it reflects poorly on the Legislature as a whole.”

Huh? Lucky for Inouye that many readers don’t understand conference committee procedure…

The whole point of Conference Committee is to resolve the differences between the Senate and House drafts. Inouye and her Senate colleagues passed a version of that bill last year (with no opposition). The House took a different tack, and it resulted in significant opposition. For Inouye to say that Conferencing on the measure is “an affront to the public,” is balderdash. It’s not as if merely appointing managers and agreeing to hold a conference meeting means that the House’s alleged “gamesmanship” would emerge intact. Especially since Senator Taniguchi would have to agree to the “game,” in order for there to be any chance of that happening.

Working with the two drafts, a good ethics bill could emerge. The “message” has been delivered to Green, even if it does not become law. The Senate seems too eager to let this sideshow derail a decent piece of legislation.

The Associated Press (via the Star-Bulletin) and the Advertiser each have articles about the release of the first part of the performance audit examining how the Hawaii Superferry project was exempted from environmental review by the Department of Transportation.

Not too much “new” information in the report, since the Advertiser had been doing its own digging at the same time, so I’ll just excerpt this passage from page 15 of the Auditor’s report:

Records disclosure

Requested records have been screened and released piecemeal to us over an extended period of time, from the first boxes received on December 21, 2007 to the most recent delivery of March 18, 2008. We were told by a deputy attorney general that he and other deputies were assigned to screen documents twice for attorney-client and executive privileged information, a unique and time-consuming process. Their review first addressed the documents requested from the Department of Transportation, then the documents submitted by other departments, and finally the electronic mail. The deputies were instructed to protect attorney-client and executive privileged information by removing entire pages of submitted documents. The attorney general informed us that he was invoking the attorney-client privilege with respect to communications to and from officials and employees and deputy attorneys general concerning legal advice and counsel. He also informed us that executive privilege extended to documents and policy discussions involving the governor, lieutenant governor, the governor’s chief of staff, and the governor’s policy advisors, directors and deputy directors of executive departments, executive agency heads, and any administrative assistants to those officials. [Boldfacing mine] The attorney general and then-director of transportation cited these same privileges several times during the hearings relating to Act 2, SSSLH 2007, in declining to disclose what, if any, legal advice the then-director received before he made the decision to exempt the Superferry project from an environmental assessment. By March 2008, we received 22 boxes of DOT documents which had been screened by the Department of the Attorney General.

Regarding our request for electronic copies of selected emails from various departments, on March 18, 2008, over four months after submitting our requests, we were provided with six boxes of printed emails and four DVDs containing electronic copies of some of the emails. We were provided with a subset of the electronic mail that we originally requested, but were not provided a list of what had been included or excluded from our request. For example, we were not provided emails from the Office of the Governor or the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, although these records had been requested.

Further, the deputy attorney general stated that he would provide a log reflecting documents and emails that had been removed due to privilege. As of March 2008, we have not received that log. We know, however, that documents have been removed because the missing ones are referenced in other documents and emails. In many cases, there are print job cover sheets with no attached print jobs.

That’s a broad claim of Executive Privilege apparently being allowed to slide by legally unchallenged, and with hardly any remark! How can the Legislative possibly exercise the proper oversight of Executive Branch performance if communication between whatever Executive Branch officials actually leading the agency are capriciously withheld from review?

Attorney-client privilege is a pretty flimsy argument when invoked by government, but I can (sometimes, and then grudgingly) stomach it. This, however, is too much.

This could be quite a coup for the developers who comprise the Land Use Research Foundation: The Pacific Business News reports that the new Executive Director of the Land Use Commission was formerly the Executive Director of LURF.

Hopefully, Davidson will not let that era of his career completely override his more recent experience at the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation…

This is a post filled at the discretion of the Commissioners, not subject to Senate confirmation.

Anybody know why I can no longer (as of yesterday) read or submit comments on the Advertiser blogs?

At first I thought it might be a “sign-in first” policy taken too far, so I went ahead and set up an account (Poinographer). Even after that, though, every time I click on a link that is supposed to go to the comments part of a post I am redirected to a gender, date of birth, nationality, zip code form. I fill out the form completely, but the submit button does … nothing. I am using the latest versions of Mac OS X and Safari.

I can read the comments left on the non-blog parts of the Advertiser without any trouble.

Help!

Fellow wonks might like this post I noticed at The Thicket (the NCSL blog) regarding legislative information systems and the rarity of being able to review voting records sorted by legislator. Hawaii does not offer this kind of report, and the post notes that the data only seem to be available in five jurisdictions. Instead of that type of information, Hawaii embeds the voting records in each history page. You’d need to open thousands of such pages, but the data are technically “there” for the taking.

Given a rainy weekend after the end of session, I could become motivated to write a perl script able to automatically extract the data from those history pages… Which means that one of the (paid!) computer geeks at the Lege should be able to do the same.

In an emotional post on his personal blog, Hawaii County Councilmember (and candidate for Mayor) Stacy Higa fervently denies all the allegations against him and calls upon the media (i.e. Hawaii Tribune-Herald) to name the anonymous source who described the sealed settlement agreement court order.

Higa can ask all he wants, but I expect that the newspaper won’t be revealing the name of the source—unless they never want to use any anonymous sources in the future…

From the few tidbits that are publicly known about the case, I still think it’s likely that this sealed settlement court order was to address the behavior of County employees other than Higa who allegedly pressured the complainant not to make her initial harassment claim. That scenario would seem to fit with Councilmember Higa being called as a witness rather than as a defendant, at least.

Higa is in an obviously sticky spot and deserves a chance to dispute the allegations in public, but I don’t know what should have been done differently, if anything. That’s the problem with secret settlements court orders!

UPDATED April 16: I was calling this a settlement, when in fact it is a court order.

Also, a new article in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald that tries (without much success) to figure out what comes next. The only thing certain is that if the $272,000 is paid, the Council will have to approve the payment. No word if the court order will be appealed, but that remains a decision that would be made entirely at the discretion of Corporation Counsel Lincoln Ashida.

I am not very concerned about who will lead the Hawaii Democratic Party for the next two years, but at a news conference yesterday former Representative Brian Schatz annonced that he is seeking the job. (Advertiser and Star-Bulletin) Both stories cover much of the same ground, but, seriously, I can’t remember the last time it made a difference who was leading the Party. Schatz picked a fortuitous day and time to make his announcement—pretty much nothing else happened on Sunday to divert the media attention.

As made clear by the “closed primary” flap and the Bev Harbin debacle, there are often disconnects between the candidates, the voters, and the (active) party members who write the platform; I don’t see how Schatz (or anyone else) can remedy those issues, nor do I know if those are even considered important issues to him. Maybe he’ll be a good/better behind-the-scenes fundraiser, maybe not. As for the “old guard” vs. “new blood” meme, showing up one night to a heavily-hyped caucus is much more fun than the tedium of day-to-day Party operations. I’d be amazed if his disciples step up (and have the votes) to displace many of the long-time Party members who do the unglamorous heavy lifting.

Yawn.

You may recall that Schatz has had a blog for while. Surprisingly, there is nothing there about his latest venture. If this isn’t worthy of a post, then what is? Go figure.

I am disappointed that this otherwise interesting article in the Advertiser about CEO pay for large Hawaii-based companies didn’t provide an answer to the question I posed earlier.

“[High compensation for CEOs of poorly-performing companies] has nothing to do with the circumstances of their leaving,” said Linda Lampkin, research director with ERI Economic Research Institute, which conducts executive pay and cost-of-living studies for employers. “Even though they may be leaving on less than ideal situations, the companies are bound by what the executives’ contracts say.”

The severance packages for [Hawaiian Telcom’s] Ruley and [Central Pacific’s] Arnoldus were among the key highlights of an Advertiser review of the pay policies of Hawai’i’s publicly traded companies. The study, based on filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Hawai’i’s eight largest companies, found that the average pay for a local CEO rose nearly 4.5 percent to $2.3 million last year from $2.2 million in 2006.

The 2007 average was equivalent to $6,525 per day and is more than 29 times the state’s median household income.

Five of the 10 CEOs in this year’s survey received pay raises but just two received a bonus last year. The bulk of the pay increases came in the form of stock options and other forms of compensation that aim to tie the executives’ pay to company performance.

So, I’ll ask again, how much was Mr. Banmiller of Aloha Airlines awarded in pay and bonuses in 2007?