Hawaii’s Sunshine Law (Chapter §92-1) states: "Opening up the governmental processes to public scrutiny and participation is the only viable and reasonable method of protecting the public’s interest."

Most state departments are led by a single administrator, with no board or commission.

These have no open meetings, no public access to observe decisions, or provide public input in them.

We find out about decisions after the fact.

But for some, we have collective decision-making. Well-known boards include the Board of Education, the University of Hawaii Board of Regents and the Board of Land and Natural Resources.

Why even have a board? First, they bring different knowledge, perspectives, experiences and skills to decisions.

They bring debate.

The governor nominates volunteers for service on the boards and these must be approved by the Senate.

We have rules to ensure some level of public scrutiny and participation — rather loosely applied for meetings, but severely applied to member interactions. Are we getting the worst, not the best, of both worlds?

We require public meeting notices, but not that documents or information to be addressed at those meetings be made available online to the public in advance of the meeting.

We can "observe" a discussion, but may have no idea what they are talking about.

Minutes should be public within 30 days, but many hold back minutes for an indefinite time until "approved."

Boards accept input, but often, only once at the start of a meeting for all agenda items, limited to two or three minutes.

On occasions, I have been the only person to sign up to testify, but after three minutes — buzzzzz — cut off in mid sentence. Recently the Board of Education proposed reducing public input to two minutes.

Public input and participation is often only grudgingly tolerated. Two minutes, the bell rings, please go away while we get down to the real business. Usually, few members of the public are present to observe or participate.

There is another side to this. We so distrust board members, we want to constrain their ability to actually work as a board, to engage in lively and open-ended discussions, to bounce ideas off each other, to appear in public forums together, even to attend conferences or workshops together.

They cannot all show up to a conference or communicate with each other (leave that to the lobbyists!). Yes, every single citizen can communicate through emails or otherwise with all members of any board — except other members of that board.

These constraints are counterproductive to the purpose of having an appointed board in the first place.

We have become so paranoid as to begin with the premise that all boards and commissions are teetering on the brink of corruption.

Perhaps we should rethink the very purpose and value of boards, as well as their obligations, including:

» Allow for all board members to attend the same events — conferences, workshops, public forums, meetings of other boards — otherwise, we limit their ability to interact with and learn from the widest possible range of views, themselves and the public.

» Insist documents or staff presentations be posted in advance along with the original agendas to allow the public time to review and comment. Otherwise, the ability to observe, understand and comment on what is happening is a sham.

» Don’t say we can testify for only two minutes, unless the chairperson allows more. Say five minutes, unless the chair needs to shorten it.

And allow testimony before or after each agenda item, not all at the beginning. Otherwise, we are dismissing meaningful participation of the public.