A variety of bills designed to make lawmakers and state boards more transparent are moving through the Legislature, drawing general applause from advocates for open government.

“I am very encouraged by the fact that the House is taking up transparency, elections, ethics and campaign finance issues,” Janet Mason, a member of the legislative committee for the League of Women Voters of Hawaii, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “They are doing it quickly. We can see this, and we are hopeful that this means we’ll have turnaround to the situation we found ourselves in last year.”

Two bills would severely limit campaign donation amounts, and three would impose term limits on state lawmakers. A bill pertaining to term limits has been deferred.

In February 2022, disgraced Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English and now-former state Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen pleaded guilty in federal court to accepting bribes to support and kill legislation on behalf of Milton J. Choy, owner and manager of a company called H2O Process Systems.

Their guilty pleas touched off widespread calls for campaign spending and ethics reform, which led to the creation of the Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct, which made 31 recommendations that are before the Legislature.

Addressing the matter of reform, Colin Moore, who serves as chair of the School of Communication and Information at the University of Hawaii and director of the UH Public Policy Center, said, “Transparency is a great remedy for corruption.” He added, “Generally, transparency is desirable because people behave better … if they know the public can view their decisions and where money is coming from.”

The upshot of genuine transparency, Moore said, is that it “tends to create more ethical behavior.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday passed Senate Bill 1543 Opens in a new tab. It proposes that candidates who generate individual donations of $5 or less could qualify for increased public contributions ranging from $20,000 for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, up to $50,000 for House candidates, $100,000 for Senate candidates, $1.2 million for races for lieutenant governor and $2.5 million for gubernatorial candidates.

The following House bills are advancing, having passed a third reading.

>> HB 99 Opens in a new tab and its companion, SB 204 Opens in a new tab, limit the total amount of cash a candidate, candidate committee or noncandidate committee may accept from a single person during an election period to $100.

Donors are now limited to a $6,000 contribution to candidates seeking a four-year statewide office; $4,000 to candidates seeking a four-year, nonstatewide office; and $2,000 to candidates seeking a two-year office, according to the state Campaign Spending Commission.

>> HB 89 Opens in a new tab and companion SB 194 Opens in a new tab prohibit elected officials from soliciting and accepting campaign contributions while the Legislature is in session.

>> HB 90 Opens in a new tab and companion SB 195 Opens in a new tab require candidate committees and noncandidate committees to file fundraiser notices regardless of the price or suggested contribution.

>> HB 93 and companion SB 198 require the state Campaign Spending Commission to publish on its website the names of candidates or organizers of noncandidate committees who fail to file an organizational report or a corrected organizational report with the commission.

Among other House bills:

>> HB 706 Opens in a new tab requires all members of the Legislature to share certain relationships with lobbyists or lobbying organizations in their financial disclosures.

>> HB 712 Opens in a new tab and companion SB 1426 Opens in a new tab encourage state boards to maintain electronic audio and visual recordings of board meetings on their websites, and require boards to provide the state archives with the recordings before removing them from their websites.

>> HB 719 imposes a cap on charges for the reproduction of certain government records beginning July 1, 2024; waives the cost of duplication of government records provided to requesters in an electronic format; imposes a cap on charges for searching for, reviewing and segregating records; and provides a waiver of fees when the public interest is served by a record’s disclosure.

>> HB 463 Opens in a new tab lowers the threshold for disclosure of campaign expenditures for noncandidate committees to $100. The bill states that Hawaii’s current campaign finance laws “fail to reveal the source of campaign expenditures for non-candidate committees when the expenditures are under $1,000.”

>> HB 626 Opens in a new tab, HB 831 Opens in a new tab, HB 796 Opens in a new tab and companion SB 1424 Opens in a new tab propose term limits. HB 626 proposes a state constitutional amendment to limit legislators to a maximum of 12 years in the House and Senate, with exemptions for legislators who have already served 12 years.

>> HB 831 proposes a constitutional amendment limiting state lawmaker terms to a maximum of 16 years.

>> HB 796, which calls for a constitutional amendment prohibiting legislators from serving more than 16 years during their lifetimes, has been deferred. Its companion, SB 1424, is still alive and contains similar provisions.

Among the Senate bills:

>> SB 613 Opens in a new tab and companion HB 1222 Opens in a new tab require the House and Senate to use remote testimony at committee hearings.

>> SB 699 Opens in a new tab requires the lieutenant governor to administer a state Capitol tours program.

>> SB 188 and companion HB 141 require every state legislator to disclose the names of lobbyists with whom have a financial interest.

>> SB 149 requires the Legislature to meet year-round, creates a two-year deadline for bills to be submitted and standardizes the number of days that the governor must approve or veto bills.

>> SB 997 requires identification of top donors who contribute to noncandidate committees and requires noncandidate committees that spend over $10,000 to maintain transfer records and provide notice to donors.

>> SB 1422 Opens in a new tab and companion HB 710 Opens in a new tab establish a Class C felony for using or making false statements within the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the state and counties. Anyone convicted would be barred from public office for 10 years.

>> SB 1421 Opens in a new tab and companion HB 711 Opens in a new tab establish the offense of fraud as a Class B felony and disqualify anyone convicted from holding public office for 10 years.