On March 16, journalists across the country marked National Freedom of Information Day by promoting the importance of openness in government and the public’s right to know.

The date was selected because it is the birthday of James Madison, the fourth president of the United States, who is credited with writing the First Amendment to the constitution with its protection of freedom of religion, freedom of the press and, by implication, the need of the press and the people to be able to find out what the government is doing.

Just a week later,  a state grand jury indicted Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi for misusing a county-issued purchasing card, or pCard, to pay for personal expenses. The criminal charges include both felony and misdemeanor theft, filing false entries on a p-Card transaction summary, and then making a false statement under oath.

In my view, it’s quite appropriate to see the association between these two events, the day underscoring the importance of access to government information and records, and the indictment of a sitting mayor who apparently tried his best to cover up his own document trail.

Indeed, Kenoi’s uncomfortable situation is the result of both the power of the right to know, and its rather tepid implementation by state and local governments in Hawaii.

It’s apparently fair to say that the mayor might still be enjoying the personal benefits of county credit if it weren’t for the dogged reporting of the story by Nancy Cook Lauer at West Hawaii Today.

Elected officials often pay lip service to openness, but in practice are loath to let the press and the public in on their secrets.

Lauer, aided by a document obtained from an unidentified source, broke the story of Kenoi’s use of a county credit card for a 2013 visit to a Honolulu hostess bar in a March 2015 story. Her report in turn pressured the county to finally release the mayor’s purchasing card statements and receipts.

According to Lauer’s account, the newspaper had unsuccessfully sought pCard statements and receipts since 2010, and had made a more pointed request for records in 2014, but the county stonewalled until her initial story broke.

In a Facebook comment, Lauer later wrote: “To me, it’s always been about access to government records.”

Lauer was relying on the state law that requires most government records to be made available to the public on request. The Uniform Information Practices Act (Chapter 92F HRS) provides: “All government records are open to public inspection unless access is restricted or closed by law.”

But saying it doesn’t make it so, as Lauer and other reporters know quite well. There are a myriad of excuses and delaying tactics, from simple foot-dragging to the concoction of outrageous fees and charges, that agencies rely on to avoid or put off disclosure.

Government bureaucracies are formidable in their ability to ward off public inquiries, and in recent years state legislators have shown little stomach for strengthening public disclosure requirements. Instead, they’ve yielded to special interests and slowly created new categories of information legally shielded from disclosure. Even when these don’t actually provide legal cover for specific documents, the exceptions can be used as part of the inevitable delaying tactics.

And when the documents at issue involve the boss, whether elected or appointed, most employees will work hard to avoid embarrassing disclosures.

Reporters these days rarely have the luxury to pursue long-term document requests because they are expected to turn over stories quickly, and so stalling is often enough to ensure the protection of official secrets.

Two Sides Of Disclosure

It looks like Lauer’s fine reporting of Kenoi’s improper spending is what finally sank the mayor and his political career. For that, she and West Hawaii Today deserve full credit.

But I look at it a little differently. It’s only the belated disclosure that sank Kenoi’s political ship.

Things might have gone quite differently if Kenoi knew, when he first took office after his 2008 election, that all expenditures made with the county purchasing card would be regularly scrutinized by others, from political foes to enterprising reporters. Usually the likelihood of having one’s indiscretions revealed on the front pages is a powerful deterrent to official misbehavior.

But in our current political environment, far too many requests for disclosure of government records are met with veiled hostility and behind-the-scenes resistance from agency employees, who understand that their elected bosses are not champions of transparency.

Elected officials often pay lip service to openness, but in practice are loath to let the press and the public in on their secrets. Under those circumstances, the mayor thought he was safe from public scrutiny. And he was, for years.

And the way these things work is that getting away with the risky once or twice encourages the behavior to continue and usually to escalate.

If Kenoi had been encouraged to stay on the right side of that thin edge of ethics by the understanding that his spending records wouldn’t stay secret for long, he might have made different choices, and would now be looking at a run for higher office instead of a high-profile criminal trial.

So let’s do all of our public officials a big favor and save them from themselves by demanding more transparency at all levels of government.