Raising Cane
By Rob Perez
Campaign reform bill
would codify buying votesIf you want to see a perfect example of our legislative process gone amok, check out the campaign reform bill passed by the state Senate last week.
It's almost too amazing to believe.
For starters, our esteemed senators passed a measure (Senate Bill 459 Senate Draft 1) that creates a blatant, unlimited money-for-votes scheme, all in the name of helping charities.
The bill eliminates the current limits on how much money campaigns can contribute to charities ($2,000 for House candidates, $4,000 for Senate and $6,000 for gubernatorial) and requires that such donations be made specifically for the purpose of helping the candidate's election.
It's a money-for-votes quid pro quo that, if passed by the full Legislature, would be written into state law.
Even worse, the election-influencing proposal was made as an 11th-hour amendment to the reform bill by the legislation's main sponsor, Sen. Cal Kawamoto, who is under investigation for allegedly exceeding the very limits he's now trying to eliminate.
What's more, the amendment was approved without any public comment or notice, and committee members who authorized the changes Feb. 28 got copies only minutes before voting.
Kawamoto (D, Waipahu) proposed the stealth amendment several weeks after the Campaign Spending Commission opened its investigation into his campaign. The senator denies any wrongdoing.
While the reform bill does some commendable things, such as prohibit government contractors from making campaign contributions, the vote-buying provision has people shaking their heads.
"There it is in black and white -- you can buy votes," said an astonished Bob Watada, head of the commission. "This clearly crosses the line."
Indeed, this kind of political shenanigan has helped breed cynicism among many voters about the overall legislative process.
And the campaign bill is far from the only one this session that critics cite to raise questions about the integrity and fairness of the process.
Environmentalists and others were outraged, for instance, when a major environmental/ county operations bill dealing with landfills over aquifers (SB1532) was yanked from the Senate's environmental and government operations committees, whose chairmen opposed the bill, and was moved to another one, Water, Land and Agriculture, where it was supported by the chairwoman and moved to the full Senate. A growing chorus of criticism, however, prompted senators to kill the bill last week.
Proponents of fluoridating Hawaii's drinking water similarly were angered when a bill (SB1038 SD1) that effectively would ban fluoridation -- something hotly debated for decades -- was camouflaged in such a way that it quietly passed the Senate and a House committee with none of the controversy that marked previous efforts.
Then there's the controversial Pacific Health Center bill (House Bill 550 House Draft 1), which would allow a planned hospital in Waipio to bypass all city land-use requirements. Rep. Marcus Oshiro, a board member of the nonprofit Wahiawa Hospital Association, introduced and pushed the bill even though Pacific Health Community, the project developer, is a for-profit arm of the association.
Oshiro (D, Wahiawa) didn't return a call seeking comment. Many of his House colleagues apparently saw no problem with that arrangement. Yet such relationships reek of potential conflicts of interest. Oshiro, as a board member of the hospital company, has a fiduciary duty to that company; as a legislator, he has a responsibility to the state. The two aren't necessarily compatible.
As questionable as the handling of the landfill, anti-fluoridation and the Pacific Health bills was, the campaign reform measure gets the top booby prize.
The bill defines a charitable donation as a campaign expense "provided that such contribution clearly identifies that the purpose of said contribution is to influence the nomination and election of the candidate to a particular office."
Elsewhere in the bill, the provision setting the current limits on charitable donations is deleted.
A similar campaign reform bill that passed the House last week does not lift the limits or explicitly tie donations to vote-getting.
If the Senate's version survives, it would give well-financed campaign organizations such as Kawamoto's a major advantage over potential opponents, allowing the well-heeled to give unlimited donations specifically to solicit votes.
Kawamoto doesn't see a problem with that.
He said his campaign offers money each year to youth groups, organizations for the elderly and other worthy charitable groups, all of which would suffer if such practices were banned or severely restricted.
"I give to them and they say, 'Hey, that guy Kawamoto supports youth programs.' That's part of my campaign, helping the youth and helping the elderly," he said.
Besides, Kawamoto noted, "they have the option to refuse (the money) or not to refuse it. It's all upfront. It's all legal."
Other senators also said the bill makes explicit what is implied in the donations -- that the money comes from a campaign fund, not an individual, and such funds are used to get candidates elected. The bill simply requires such a disclosure to be made when offering the donation, they said.
But Watada said such interpretations obscure the main point: that this bill would authorize campaigns to pay organizations for votes. Candidates are supposed to use their campaign funds to get their message out, not to buy votes, he said.
There's another issue that adds to the ethical mess.
Kawamoto is pushing legislation that would affect how Watada's office regulates campaigns at the same time the senator is being investigated by that office.
Does anyone see a conflict there?
Conflicts can easily arise at the Legislature in part because both houses lack specific conflict of interest rules. To preserve the separation of legislative and executive branch powers, the Legislature has exempted itself from the state's conflict of interest regulations, yet it doesn't have internal ethics committees, as some other legislative bodies do, to police such issues among its members.
And the Legislature historically has demonstrated an unwillingness to aggressively pursue such matters, giving rise to sleazy political antics and fueling suspicions about the legislative process.
In recent years, however, constituents fed up with political scandals have ousted ethically challenged legislators and sought reforms, supported by some lawmakers.
Said Sen. Les Ihara Jr., a member of the Good Government Legislative Caucus: "People want a process that is open and clear of conflicts as much as possible."
That's what we want.
But are we getting it?
Star-Bulletin columnist Rob Perez writes on issues
and events affecting Hawaii. Fax 529-4750, or write to
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu 96813. He can also be reached
by e-mail at: rperez@starbulletin.com.
