On Friday evening, close to midnight when few members of the public could be present, the Hawaii House of Representatives Finance Committee unanimously passed HB345, a bill that would delay and effectively kill the Big Island clean elections pilot project. The bill now goes to the entire House and then on to a probably sympathetic Senate.
Perhaps it was the hour, perhaps it was the power of the truth to come out, but one of the few high points of the evening was the testimony of the governor's senior advisor in support of the bill, but which very nicely raised the issue of corporate money's corrupting influence. At one point, in what may have been a Freudian slip rapidly corrected, she appeared to be questioning whether Hawaii lawmakers should be arrested. Check out the link. She discusses how corporations invest in legislators. That's what advocates have been saying for years. She also used the "C-word", "corruption", which advocate testimony usually avoids as too confrontational.
Tonight one more bill comes up that could contain language blowing the lid off of corporate campaign contributions. According to Kory Payne, executive director of Voter Owned Hawaii:
If these bills were to pass, it would make Hawaii the first state in the U.S. to move backwards on this issue, allowing more, not less, corporate contributions to flow into election campaigns.
Kory was referring to HB215, which may be amended behind the scenes for another late-night committee meeting today. It is expected that House leadership may try to put language into that bill to lift corporate treasury contributions. While HB539 went down to defeat, it's not unusual for language from a defeated bill to be magically resurrected in another measure, even a totally unrelated one. That's a "feature" of Hawaii's version of democracy. Citizens and watchdog groups have to be ever vigilant.
It's like one of those old Whac-A-Mole arcade games where you have to be quick with your mallet to whack a plastic mole when it pops up in any of the holes on the counter.
There's still time for anyone wanting to weigh in to send emails to all representatives at reps@capitol.hawaii.gov asking them not to allow the present limits on corporate contributions to be lifted, or to ban corporate contributions entirely, as 22 states and the federal government presently do. You could also ask them to vote down HB345 so that the clean elections pilot project can commence on schedule and not be delayed to 2014.
Hawaii isn't Illinois. We have a generally good bunch of citizen legislators. Like anywhere else, though, it seems to be important to let them know what we expect of them.