The Hawaii Legislature created a Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct in 2022 shortly after federal agents caught two legislators taking bribes. In its report to this year’s Legislature, the commission described public corruption in Hawaii as glaring, deep-rooted and systemic.

For example, former officials currently in prison or awaiting trial include not just legislators, but prosecutors, police officers, planning-and-permitting workers, a chief building inspector, environmental-management director, affordable-housing official, wastewater-maintenance supervisor, chief of police, councilman, county managing director, county corporation counsel and police commission chairperson.

It is particularly troubling that these crimes and alleged crimes were detected and prosecuted by federal agencies. Local oversight bodies, law-enforcement agencies and courts played virtually no role in detecting or pursuing crimes that in some cases now appear obvious.

It seems unlikely that a police chief, deputy prosecutor and other law-enforcement officers could frame a totally innocent man — and then destroy physical evidence of their crime — without anyone in the police department or prosecutors’ office suspecting something. Yet that happened without any known whistleblowing from local police or prosecutors.

Even worse were the apologists and obstructionists. For example, when the now-incarcerated police chief intentionally caused a mistrial to avoid public revelation of his crimes, the Police Commission chairman told reporters, “I think the chief has acknowledged that he’s made a mistake, he’s apologized, he deeply regrets it, and we need to move on.” And the room at the commission’s next meeting was packed with former police chiefs, police trainers and others there to demonstrate their support for the chief.

Also, when an earlier ethics investigation of that police chief and his now-incarcerated deputy prosecutor wife appeared to be gaining traction, the city’s managing director pulled the plug on funding needed to continue the investigation.

Some say Hawaii’s public corruption problem can be traced to a limited few “bad apples” — but that is simplistic and ignores a critically important underlying reality.

The core problem is cultural, and it involves us all. Simply described, it is a collective tendency to “go along to get along.”

While not unique to Hawaii, this tendency is particularly strong and prevalent here. Reasons include our remote location, overlapping social networks, highly regulated business sector, bureaucratic governance structures, disproportionate reliance on government jobs, union leaders with power to make or break an individual political campaign or business activity, and, perhaps most importantly, longtime dominance of a single political party.

A tendency to go along to get along can be a very good thing for individual relationships and island harmony. The problem comes when it enables public corruption. For example, when state and county officials fail to seek accountability from official “watchdogs” who never saw — or pretended not to see — corruption the feds apparently had little trouble seeing.

Official watchdog groups include boards and commissions responsible for overseeing specific governmental functions, including the Commission on Judicial Conduct, Board of Water Supply, Commission on Water Resource Management, and Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation board — but there are many more.

The individual members of such groups tend to be exceptionally intelligent, impressively accomplished and widely respected. They also tend to be establishment insiders, not known as boat rockers. The occasional exception to that tendency does not last long.

Several years ago, a new appointee to the HART board was essentially removed after publicly calling for increased transparency and accountability for the rail project. And the Honolulu Ethics Commission’s executive director was shown the door when he refused to stop investigating the now-incarcerated police chief and deputy prosecutor.

Meanwhile, individuals perceived as model team players sometimes find their oversight services in high demand. One of the individuals now awaiting trial for an alleged crime previously served on the Judicial Selection Commission, Board of Water Supply, Legislative Salary Commission, Honolulu Police Commission, Judicial Salary Commission, and Honolulu Reapportionment Commission.

This year’s Legislature enacted some of the Standards Commission’s less-controversial recommendations, and hope springs eternal regarding the others. Meanwhile, perhaps it would help if state and local appointing authorities affirmatively recruited more establishment outsiders (aka boat rockers) to serve on watchdog agencies.

Randall Roth is professor emeritus at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii-Manoa.