Bring Sunshine to Hawaii

There's sunshine everywhere in Hawaii except inside the halls of our state legislature.

It's time for a change!

Sign the petition to let the light in.

Another secret bill: SB1015

I received an email tip to check out this bill. Here's what I found: We're being cheated again as the House Water, Land, & Ocean Resources Committee hides its actions from the public.

The text of SB1015 is posted on the Capitol website here. On Friday afternoon the committee sent out a hearing notice for Tuesday. The notice says "PROPOSED HD1 available in room 432." The new text is described:

Gives BLNR up to 12/31/07, the authorization to reinstate a 999-year homestead lease that was canceled due to nonpayment of arrearages; provided, among other things, that the tenant-at-will has continually occupied the land and has cured all arrearages.

Ok, I have no idea what this is about. It's clearly designed for some special situation.

I'm not likely to find out, of course, until Tuesday morning, and only if I choose to run over to the Capitol just before the hearing. Today is Kuhio Day, a state holiday. For three days since the notice was issued, the text of this proposed amendment has been unavailable. I couldn't prepare testimony even if I wanted to.

More troubling is that Tuesday is its first and last public hearing, and you can bet the chair's recommendation to his committee will be to pass it. The public will not have participated at all in the making of this new law.

If you live on Neighbor Islands, forget it. That's the idea, actually--this House committee chair, Rep. Ezra R. Kanoho, joins his fellow chairpersons of darkness in employing this technique that locks the public out of the democratic process.

The repetition of this abuse demonstrates that committee chairs and House leadership are quite happy to trample on the public's right to participate in the making of its laws. It should have been stopped when it was first used, and it shouldn't be allowed now.

This abuse should be prohibited--please sign the petition.

posted by Larry @ 4:58 PM