As the “first rough draft” of history, journalism tends to start and extend communal discussions as a way for society to gradually mull its outcomes and possibilities, bit by bit. Journalists also need time to tease out answers.

Whether the circulating topic is presidential collusion with Russians or fake traffic tickets in Honolulu, many questions get raised in this process but inevitably only some get addressed. The toughest of these curiosities are the squirmiest, left to the devotion of the most diligent of the professional journalists to pin down.

The ongoing traffic-ticket case, for example, has been ripening for more than a year, after Hawaii News Now’s Lynn Kawano raised the allegations that a top city prosecutor, Katherine Kealoha – who also happens to be the (now disgraced former) police chief’s wife – lied in court to help a business associate.

Kawano and Nick Grube of Civil Beat have kept working on this story, but look at your public officials – remember, you pay their salaries to represent you – who won’t even respond to Grube’s basic questions about the corruption charges: Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro, prosecutor Kealoha and the officer originally involved in issuing the “ghost” ticket, Ty Ah Nee.

Along with canned statements, these “no comment” tactics are another way that public officials avoid uncomfortable topics until they eventually go away. The only force keeping them circulating is the interest of journalists and concerned citizens.

Here are a couple of other recent examples in which questions of significant public concern seemingly are being blown off by our elected or appointed officials:

Sophie Cocke, of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, wrote a public-health story recently that began with this jaw-dropping line: “On some islands, lead levels have spiked as high as two to three times the rate for children in Flint, Mich., at the height of that city’s lead crisis that sparked community outrage.” If true, this seems like it would be a national emergency. Shouldn’t we act on this information immediately?

How did sources in the story, who seem like they should be alarmed, respond? With bland statements, piles of stats and shoulder shrugs. The Department of Health, in these contexts, appears indifferent to our community’s health, as also outlined by Civil Beat’s Nathan Eagle in a story about animal-waste pollutants.

In the lead-in-the-water story, Cocke could get some statistics from the Department of Health but not much clarity from its representatives about what is being done (or not done) about the lead-poisoning threat.

A couple of state lawmakers, Rep. Della Au Belatti and Sen. Rosalyn Baker, even proposed bills that would have provided $1 million in funding for such prevention. But neither bill received a hearing.

Baker declined to comment on why, and Belatti pointed to a lack of effort and enthusiasm from the public agency. She said, “I think we need to rely on the Department of Health to raise the alarm.”

With that idea lingering, this story signed off without trying to pin down exactly who should be responsible and how urgently attention is needed. We’ll see if this topic falls back into a black hole of public ambivalence until some other event triggers its resurrection.

When our public institutions and officials operate under these sorts of whims and veils – which protect them, not us – we are the worse for it.

House Speaker Joe Souki acknowledged this perverse cloaked culture among public officials recently, when one representative was “reassigned” committees, after hours of closed-door discussions.

Don’t you think you might want to know how public business is being done and why Rep. Angus McKelvey so urgently was removed from his chairmanship of the House Consumer Protection and Commerce Committee?

Civil Beat’s Chad Blair documented some of the related questions and concerns about McKelvey, leading to the unusual mid-session removal of his position as chair of the committee.

“We’re always secretive. It’s part of being a legislator.” — House Speaker Joe Souki

At the center of the controversy was a pesticide-disclosure bill that McKelvey had amended. Ashley Lukens, director of the Hawaii Center for Food Safety, told Blair, “I do not think that Angus amended the bill to address the concerns of my food safety advocates. I think he amended the bill to kill it, which is precisely what the agrochemical industry needed to happen.”

So what’s the real story here?

House Speaker Souki declined to elaborate, noting: “We’re always secretive. It’s part of being a legislator.”

Actually, the opposite should be true, and Souki offends us all by arguing otherwise. Democracy works best when engaged and informed citizens collaborate extensively with public officials to continually refine and redirect society toward goals of greater public good.

Give him credit (or discredit) for the honesty, but to take Souki at his word in this case is to mark a fundamental collapse of democratic principles in this state, voiced by a top political leader.

You deserve better, including better answers to questions about public concerns by representatives of your public agencies. These people work for you, not the other way around.

If Souki or other public officials want to be secretive or avoid answering questions, they should start their own private enterprises and leave their public-service jobs immediately.

If they want to continue to work for us, though, they should instantly open up and tell us everything we want to know about our public interests, in as much depth as we seek. Otherwise, why are we employing them?