“Competitive advantage” appears to be the antidote for anything the Hawaii Tourism Authority board wants to take behind closed doors.

Two years ago, the Legislature passed the tourism secrecy law, allowing HTA to ”maintain the confidentiality of competitively sensitive information.” Put another way, authority members can talk about spending more than $50 million in taxpayer dollars out the view of the public.

Pacific Business News’ new tourism reporter Vanessa Van Voorhis recently sat in on a board of directors meeting and found members using that term to cover a whole host of issues — even ones that don’t seem at all “competitively sensitive.”

Here’s a sample of her report:

This was my first HTA board meeting, and I left wondering how the information that would have been discussed and shared with the very taxpayers funding its activities could have placed the organization at a competitive disadvantage.

For example, how is HTA’s appointment of members to its evaluation committee competitive information?

Perhaps the $69 million question is this: Shouldn’t there be some requirement to justify a “competitive advantage” claim before moving it into executive session, such as identifying — at least in broad terms — who might find the information helpful and how it could help them?

She makes a great point.