Trust is at the center of most relationships, and it is especially critical for interactions between citizens and government officials. In a well-functioning democracy, citizens recognize the decisions of government as legitimate because they generally believe their representatives value the common good over personal gain.

Trust in government depends on transparency. Citizens need access to adequate information to evaluate how decisions are made and the implications of those decisions for their own lives. Perhaps most important, transparency in government means that violations of trust will be exposed, causing corrupt officials to suffer legal and electoral consequences for their actions.

But what happens when citizens have inadequate information to detect corruption and to punish crooked politicians? Citizens lose trust in government and official corruption increases.

In this legislative session, our representatives face the difficult task of restoring trust between citizens and their government after a series of corruption scandals that culminated in the bribery convictions of the former majority leader of the state Senate (J. Kalani English) and a state representative (Ty Cullen) in 2022.

To his great credit, House Speaker Scott Saiki quickly established a blue-ribbon commission to make recommendations for change. The Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct issued an interim report, on March 31, with 15 bills for immediate consideration by the Legislature. Seven bills passed last year, and then-Gov. David Ige signed five into law.

The commission, chaired by former Intermediate Court of Appeals Judge Dan Foley, produced a second more sweeping report in December. The report’s appendix includes 26 specific bills designed to restore confidence in the integrity of the legislative process, reinforce ethics of legislators, increase gift-reporting requirements, and increase penalties for fraud and criminal conduct by legislators. The report also suggested new regulations on lobbyists, more voter education, and changes to campaign finance.

The Legislature should carefully consider these reforms — and most, we believe, should be adopted. Three of them offer particularly powerful tools to restore trust and reduce corruption.

Major penalties for fraud. The commission’s proposals for a mandatory prison sentence of one year and a prohibition on running for public office for 10 years provide a clear signal that casual corruption will not be tolerated. A decade away from office would effectively end the career of any ambitious politician.

Establish an Office of the Public Advocate. This proposal codifies 13 rights of citizens to engage with the Legislature and installs a public advocate to investigate violations of these rights. Building more positive and productive interactions between legislators and citizens provides a clear path for rebuilding trust in political institutions.

Increase public financing for elections. The need to raise money to fund political campaigns has been a root cause of many local corruption scandals. The commission’s proposal to upgrade Hawaii’s largely ineffective system of partial public financing for campaigns represents a step in the right direction. Full public financing for all political campaigns has worked well in Arizona, Maine, and Connecticut.

The Legislature can demonstrate that it is serious about restoring trust by trusting and adopting the recommendations of its own blue-ribbon commission.

What if the Legislature fails to take actions to restore trust?

History provides clear lessons: Governments that lose the public’s trust are less politically stable, find it more costly to undertake large investment projects, often ignore critical reforms to government operations and programs, and struggle to compete economically with robust democracies. Taking fast action to restore trust in government should be the No. 1 priority of the 2023 Legislature.

Sumner La Croix is a senior research fellow at the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO) and an emeritus professor of Economics at UH-Manoa; Colin Moore is chair of the School of Communication & Information at UH-Manoa and an associate professor at UHERO.