The Legislature is shortly to begin its work, crafting new laws, revising old ones. It is a complex process for the average citizen to follow, even under the best conditions.
Unfortunately, conditions are anything but optimal. Through one device in particular, the public is barred from having clear information about some legislation, and this does not serve good government in any way.
That device has come to be known as “gut and replace,” a maneuver through which a measure that started through the mill in one form emerges at the other end as a completely different proposal — with the public left in the dark.
It’s been a favorite go-to as a means of accelerating a bill through to passage, often without the specific subject going through the required degree of review and debate. And as the session’s
Jan. 16 launch looms, there’s hope that a new push to constrain this behavior finally can succeed.
The nonprofit League of Women Voters of Hawaii and Common Cause Hawaii have sued over the issue, in September filing a complaint before the First Circuit Court alleging that the practice violates the state Constitution.
On the rhetorical front, while that case moves toward a judicial resolution, the minority caucus of five Republican House members — state Reps. Gene Ward, Lauren Matsumoto, Val Okimoto, Bob McDermott and Cynthia Thielen — all signed onto a commentary piece published Dec. 27 on the op-ed page of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Aligning themselves with the plaintiffs, they described it as a practice in which “a committee deletes the contents of a bill and replaces it with the contents of another.
“We have seen various forms of it, and unfortunately, the public is left playing a game of whack-a-mole — a bill that died in one committee that somehow pops up later in another bill, either replacing a bill completely or getting crammed in,” they wrote.
The lawsuit centers on Act 84 and seeks to void that law and get a court declaration of the process as unconstitutional. The act is the final form of Senate Bill 2858, ultimately a law requiring the state to consider hurricane-resistant criteria when designing and constructing new schools.
But that’s not how it started out, according to the court complaint. When SB 2858 was introduced, it was a bill to mandate that the state Department of Public Safety prepare an annual report about efforts to reduce recidivism rates and improve rehabilitation of inmates.
That bill had been approved by the Senate then crossed over to the House, where, in the Committee on Public Safety, lawmakers deleted (gutted) the contents and filled it with content from a wholly unrelated measure, House Bill 2452, the one about hurricane-resistant criteria. As it happens,
HB 2452 passed the House but did not progress through the Senate.
In the process, the plaintiffs argue, the actual subject of Act 84 fell short of two constitutional requirements: that it get three readings in each chamber on separate days, and that “each law shall embrace but one subject, which shall be expressed in its title.”
The bills shared this nondescript title: “A Bill for an Act Relating to Public Safety.” Lawmakers could slide through a full range of proposals under that banner, their constituents none the wiser.
Any guidance Hawaii lawmakers follow to make the title germane to the subject matter is plainly insufficient. Hawaii is not alone in this shortcoming, and some states have no rules on germaneness at all.
It is good that the GOP legislators are joining with the good-government groups’ efforts to shut down this process. Whether or not the court takes that action, lawmakers themselves have the power to do better for the voters who elected them.
Without court prompting, they should simply act in the interest of public transparency because it’s the right thing to do.
