Honolulu sure could learn a thing or two from San Jose, California.

In a Governing magazine opinion piece, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed credits open government for convincing voters to implement difficult pension reform to save his city’s budget.

The idea, Reed says, is that when you engage the public early-on and provide meaningful information, such as about pensions or raising taxes, the citizenry can become a government’s greatest ally.

A view from outside Honolulu Hale.

“When residents and taxpayers know the facts, it’s harder for elected officials to ignore problems,” Reed wrote. “Making tough choices becomes possible.”

San Jose improved transparency in a number of ways, three of which Reed highlighted:

1- The city strengthened its sunshine and ethics rules to give the public more notice about upcoming decisions.

2- Collective bargaining was pulled from the shadows, requiring all proposals to be posted online when first presented.

3- The budgeting process was changed to allow taxpayers to have a say in how their city dollars should be allocated.

Any one of these would be a welcome change here in Honolulu, where transparency is lacking and decisions oftentimes feel preordained.

Not only is it incredibly difficult — and expensive — to pry public information out of government agencies, but sometimes it can be incredibly frustrating.

Case in point: Civil Beat is still waiting on basic budget documents it asked the Caldwell administration for nearly a year ago.