Fair-weather friends: The Sunshine Blog was most amused to see former Gov. Neil Abercrombie and his archenemy Sen. Donna Kim fawning all over each other at a recent meeting of the Senate Higher Education Committee (which Kim chairs).

What’s not so funny is that the thing Kim and Abercrombie have found to link arms on is a rollback of Hawaii’s Sunshine Law, a 1998 staple of transparency in the state that has for years forced reluctant public officials to conduct the public’s business openly. Something that those two clearly aren’t so fond of doing.

And, it turns out, they aren’t the only ones. The witness panel at the hearing on Thursday included several members of the University of Hawaii Board of Regents — which is about to hire a new president to replace retiring David Lassner — UH attorney Carrie Okinaga and Attorney General Anne Lopez.

The Sunshine Law has been on the books for more than 25 years and many of them, including Kim and Abercrombie, acted like they still just don’t get it. Can we send emails to each other, can we all go on a site visit together, can we even be in this room at the Senate committee meeting together?

“When you were governor did you know (what Sunshine means)?” Kim asked the former governor.

“No, not a clue,” Abercombie replied.

You can and should watch the hearing for yourself on the Senate’s YouTube channel but suffice it to say the most handwringing was about not being able to do the public’s business in secret.

“There are times when we have to have candid conversations with one another,” Lopez told the group. “We want to be able to disagree with each other and we want to speak frankly and you don’t want necessarily that process in the newspaper the next day because it will be construed in some other way.”

Thanks for that vote of confidence in the press and public’s ability to understand complex issues.

“How do we do then clarify without Civil Beat and everybody else saying we’re trying to shut out Sunshine when that’s not what we’re trying to do here?” Kim wanted to know.

Lopez promised to come back to the committee in short order with proposed changes to the law that would make it easier for boards and commissions to conduct more of their business off the record.

“I absolutely believe in transparency,” Lopez said. “But we have to run a business.”

Clearly what’s really going on here — and several of those at the meeting acknowledged this but appeared reluctant to identify the source of their frustration out loud — is angst over legal wins in recent years by the Public First Law Center (formerly the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest) in which the Hawaii Supreme Court has said hirings, firings and job reviews of high-level public officials need to be discussed in front of the public, not behind closed doors. Those people — which have included the former Honolulu police chief and executive directors of some agencies — are important public figures and concerns about them are legit for public scrutiny. The law center recently filed another case against the state over similar problems with other state entities.

But The Blog does like this idea thrown out near the end of the meeting by Sen. Kurt Fevella: “This is a new age so we just put body cams on everybody.”

Now that’s letting the public inside the public process.

News job blues: The bankruptcy of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s parent company, Canada’s Black Press, was big news this past week. Black’s Hawaii holdings include the two dailies on the Big Island and Kauai’s Garden Island newspaper along with MidWeek and a number of other specialty titles. There’s a move afoot for them to be sold to a newspaper chain out of Mississippi that owns more than 90 community papers.

But The Blog has also been keeping an eye on what’s happening with The Maui News which is also on its last financial legs. The Maui paper is owned by an Ogden, Utah company which has had it up for sale since last summer.

The Blog hears the paper has now lost its news reporting team who have found other jobs. And it seems like the paper will be hard-pressed to replace them if this job posting on the journalismjobs.com site is any indication. The company is advertising for a managing editor, the top newsroom job at the paper, for a salary ranging from $26,000 to just over $50,000.

It will be tough to find housing on Maui at that wage, especially with FEMA, the state and other partners driving up the price of rent with top-dollar subsidies for people who will take in Lahaina fire victims for the long term.

Check, please: In the rush to get in fundraising events before session, a half-dozen state lawmakers held campaign fundraisers in the days leading up to opening day at the Capitol. Reps. Kirstin Kahaloa, Darius Kila, Micah Aiu and Sean Quinlan held one each while Rep. Daniel Holt held back-to-back fundraisers on Jan. 10 and Jan. 11. And Rep. Cedric Gates, now running for the state Senate, also raised cash on Jan. 11 and Jan. 12.

A 2022 law prohibits county and state elected officials from holding any fundraiser “for which any price is charged or any contribution is suggested” for attendance during a regular or special session of the Legislature. But they can still accept donations during session, the very same time they are considering legislation important to special interests. As Civil Beat reported in August, the 2022 law did not stop many lawmakers from raising big bucks in the 2023 session.

Fortunately, the Campaign Spending Commission has already introduced a bill this year to prevent lawmakers from accepting any contributions during sessions. That same idea was part of the sweeping reform proposals making the rounds last session but went dwn in flames because Senate Judiciary Chair Karl Rhoads was not a big fan.

We’ll see how it fares this year. Your Sunshine Bloggers will closely follow its progress and other reform-minded legislation in the weeks and months to come.