HONOLULU — The executive director of the state Ethics Commission plans to again push for two bills in the next legislative session designed to provide greater transparency about relationships between lawmakers and lobbyists.
“Our lobbying laws are largely unchanged since the 1970s when they were first passed, and nationally, a lot of lobbying laws look pretty similar,” Executive Director Robert Harris told the Ethics Commission on Wednesday.
He plans to introduce a new version of House Bill 1884 — which passed the 2023 legislative session but in a watered-down form. And Harris hopes to reintroduce a version of HB 1885 that would expand the definition of lobbying.
“I think it is important that if legislators are receiving money from organizations that are trying to pass bills that it be very transparent and very clear,” he said. “It helps identify conflicts of interest, and it helps ensure public confidence that decisions would be made fairly accurately, particularly if there are no financial ties.”
The concept of HB 1884, Harris told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, came out of the Commission to Improve Standards of Conduct, which was created in the aftermath of the federal guilty pleas of former legislators J. Kalani English and Ty J.K. Cullen in 2022 after they accepted cash bribes to influence legislation.
Harris said the initial proposal in 2023 was to require legislators to report income received from either a lobbyist or a lobbying organization — anyone who would hire a lobbyist to get a bill passed.
The Legislature passed HB 141 in 2023, and it was signed into law as Act 123, but only after language was deleted about lobbying organizations. The remaining provision required legislators to report income from lobbyists.
“This year we introduced House Bill 1884 as an attempt to include that lobbying organization back in and get that as part of the law as well, which did not pass,” Harris said.
Harris also said he wants to reintroduce HB 1885 — which would amend the definition of lobbying — in 2025 to expand transparency and good government.
HB 1885 would expand the definition of lobbying to include certain communications regarding procurement decisions, staffing or appointment decisions, the development of an administrative agency’s written report or statement of policy, and ex parte communications regarding contested case hearings.
“Right now nothing is reported — there’s no transparency,” Harris said. “Expanding the definition of lobbying could help provide more transparency about certain interactions.”
Both HB 1884 and 1885, Harris said, would address the broader concerns over what’s known as pay-to-play relationships between lobbyists and legislators, specifically involving high-level contractors and vendors.
He hopes that future versions of HB 1885 and 1884 will help ensure “transparency, visibility, and identify potential conflicts of interests before they happen.”
Harris told the commission that lobbying laws are “principally focused on interactions with legislators regarding either administrative rules or legislation itself. It does not necessarily cover as much of the executive branch, and there are certain areas of high importance, significance to the public where, you know, shenanigans or problems may arise where increased transparency can be helpful.”
