WHILE I was on the mainland last week, an e-mail arrived from Brad Mossman of DBEDT inviting me to serve on the Economic Revitalization Task Force convened by the governor, senate president and house speaker. I was pleased. Thanks, but no thanks
Unfortunately, by the time I read to the bottom of his note, my balloon had burst. "The Task Force will have several meetings with off-the-record discussions," Mossman wrote. "The invitation to serve...is made with the understanding that the off-the-record conversations will remain off the record."
Why invite journalists to a meeting where everything said is confidential? The answer became clear when the governor defended closing the task force to the public, by saying he had invited Bud Smyser and me to serve on it. The invitation to join, it turns out, was a way to justify closing its meetings to the press and public, and to try to deflect editorial criticism.
I wrote back to Mossman saying that the decision to hold off-the-record meetings was unfortunate, and that it made my attendance unnecessary and presumably unwelcome.
It's a good idea to mobilize government, business and labor to find ways to get our economic ship back on course. But not by locking out the public. If murder trials, declarations of war and presidential impeachments can be conducted in the open, why is fixing Hawaii's economy a secret?