Office of Information Practices

The state Office of Information Practices (OIP) has added a new page to its website at oip.hawaii.gov.  On OIP’s new “Legislation” page, you will find a heading for “Important Pending and Recent Legislation.”  Here, OIP has posted a draft bill that proposes to amend the Sunshine Law to allow boards to safely conduct board business and expand public participation through virtual meetings using interactive conference technology while also providing for in-person testimony and observation at a physical location.  This bill is based on House Bill 2038, S.D. 1, H.D.1, which was passed out of the House Judiciary Committee but did not garner enough legislative urgency to be passed during the last few days of the 2020 session that ended on July 10, 2020.  While H.B. 2038, S.D. 1, H.D. 1 was proposed as a temporary emergency measure, the draft bill posted on OIP’s website is intended to make permanent amendments to the Sunshine Law and is not limited to emergency situations.  To prepare the draft bill, OIP took into account Exhibit G to the Governor’s Supplemental Proclamation 10 issued on July 17, 2020, testimony on presented to the House Judiciary Committee on June 24, 2020, and comments solicited by OIP in the May 14, 2020 What’s New article.

OIP hopes that interested persons will review the draft bill and provide comments by the end of August, before OIP submits a proposal for consideration as part of the Administration’s legislative package for next year.  If you have comments on this matter, please put in the subject line “comments for draft legislation” and email your comments to [email protected].  Mahalo!

With key law libraries closed due to COVID-19, you can also easily find most of the legislative history relating to the enactment and amendment of the statutes that OIP administers on the new “Legislation” page.  This page contains a section for the “Legislative History” of the Uniform Information Practices Act (Chapter 92F) and the Sunshine Law (Part I of Chapter 92), as well as HRS 231-19.5 relating to appeals to OIP from tax opinions.  While OIP has compiled all of the recent legislative history available on the Legislature’s website and most of the older legislative history that is available at the State Archives, it still needs to obtain a few older documents and will continue to update this page.