Office of Information Practices

May 4, 2012

On the last day of the 2012 session, the Hawaii State House of Representatives recommitted a bill requiring the official Sunshine Law meeting notices to be electronically posted. H.B. 2404, H.D. 1, S.D. 2, C.D. 1 failed to pass final reading in the House, and thus, boards must continue to file their official meeting notices in paper format with the Lt. Governor’s office. Under the Governor’s existing Executive Order, state boards are also still required to electronically post their meeting notices on the state calendar.

What further died with the bill were the Senate’s proposals to require, within 30 days of a public meeting, the electronic posting of meeting minutes and written materials that had been presented to the board at the meeting. Moreover, the conference draft of H.B. 2404 contained additional provisions that were strongly opposed by the newspapers, namely, the eventual elimination of the requirement under HRS Section 1-28.5 for the newspaper publication of legal notices, such as notices to creditors, requests for proposals, foreclosure sales, name changes, and summons. Because this newspaper publication requirement does not apply to the Sunshine Law, which is Part I of HRS Chapter 92, boards’ meeting notices must continue to be filed under the existing Sunshine Law provisions as described in the opening paragraph above.

With respect to OIP’s appeals bill, the Senate Judiciary and Labor Chair, Senator Clayton Hee, submitted for inclusion in the Senate Journal the attached comments on S.B. 2858, S.D. 1, H.D. 2, C.D. 1. His comments are consistent with those of the House Judiciary Chair, Representative Gilbert Keith-Agaran, and reflect the common legislative intent behind passage of that bill. Both legislators’ comments can be found on OIP’s website under 2012 Legislation on the Laws/Rules/Opinions page.

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