It takes time and effort to unravel Hawaii’s tangled political web.

We saw a number of examples of what I’m talking about in reporting by Civil Beat reporter-hosts this week.

Let me share a few examples and a bit of the back story on some of these articles.

• Long Time No See: Governor Drops By Honolulu Hale It’s details like these, the fact the governor found her way over to Honolulu Hale to greet former Republican and now Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle, that may seem small but are telling. Reporter-Host Adrienne LaFrance revealed how the ground has shifted since the primary election.

• Djou: ‘I Am Not a Member of the Tea Party’ The New York Times said Congressman Charles Djou is a member of the Tea Party. Our Chad Blair peeled back the layers on the story.

• The Blue Aiona and The Red Abercrombie Chad produced a four-day series on how the governor candidates don’t always take predictably conservative or liberal positions. I think you’ll find a trip through his articles on Neil Abercrombie and James “Duke” Aiona worthwhile.

• Photo of Hanabusa Makes Djou Look Bad It’s always troubling to this journalist how even lawyers like Charles Djou are willing to take intellectual property, in this case a photograph of his opponent Colleen Hanabusa, and use it without permission. In this case, Adrienne reported how Djou’s camp went so far as to alter the Honolulu Star-Advertiser‘s picture to make Hanabusa look bad in TV and print ads.

• Professional Roots: Djou and Hanabusa Reporter-Host Michael Levine is covering the 1st Congressional District race. We hear so much about what candidates think about the issues of the day, but much less about their life experience before they got into politics.

• Web of Lies in Neighborhood Dispute Who knew that a City Council race could be so complicated? Adrienne spun an amazing yarn about the controversy over District 4 candidate Rich Turbin‘s two rental properties. It was a mystery involving web pages that disappeared and reappeared — and a super model.

• Aiona, God and State After the lieutenant governor held a press conference to denounce what he called “despicable attacks twisting faith and Transformation Hawaii,” Chad looked into the veracity of his claims that his actions related to the evangelical group were always taken in his personal capacity. A review of the record makes it clear that’s not the case.

• Djou meets Hanabusa in Civil Beat/KHVH Open Mic At Civil Beat we try to bring our civil approach to dialogue to the political arena. The latest example came when we had Djou and Hanabusa on the Rick Hamada show Friday.

Why so much emphasis on politics? Because, as the candidates said on the radio, this election is important.

So is the scrutiny of public agencies. That’s why we continue to seek public records and share them with you, as we did again this week.

• Civil Beat Shares Department of Education Salaries We also continued our effort to make more transparent how government spends taxpayer funds. Education Reporter-Host Katherine Poythress shared the names, jobs and salaries of all 22,000 or so Department of Education employees and analyzed what the data could tell us about our public school system.

Next week you can count on more salaries — this time the judicial branch of government — and more revealing political stories as we head into the final week of the campaign.