The shadowy conference committee period near the end of every legislative session wasn’t quite as weird this year as last, when a frenetic “cattle call” decided the fate of dozens of measures just ahead of an earlier-than-required deadline imposed by Senate and House leaders.

Still, strange things always seem to happen at this point in the session when the two chambers use secret negotiations to supposedly try to reconcile different versions of bills they both passed.

“It’s not where you want your bill to be,” said Kristin Izumi-Nitao, executive director of the Campaign Spending Commission.

Sometimes good bills die because Senate and House conferees meeting behind closed doors say they just can’t reach agreement. Other times, and this can be even more infuriating, good bills die because either the House speaker or the Senate president don’t even bother to appoint conferees.

‘One Of The Primary Reasons They Cannot Run’

Such was the case with Senate Bill 2405, which would have clearly established that candidates can spend campaign money for child-care expenses and “vital household dependent care.”

The idea was to encourage more young parents with kids and primary caretakers of loved ones to run for political office. Such folks are underrepresented in the Legislature and county councils, and the bill was strongly supported by just about everybody.

“Child care obligations are one of the major factors families consider when weighing their decisions to run for office,” Louisa Duggan of the Vote Mama Foundation testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. “In many states it costs more to send an infant to child care than to make a mortgage payment. This is not an expense working families can take on, especially when campaigning.”

Younghee Overly of the American Association of University Women of Hawaii agreed, saying, “When I talk to moms who are very promising leaders, not having resources for child care comes up as one of the primary reasons why they cannot run.”

And the Hawaii State Democratic Women’s Caucus put it this way in written testimony: “The more lawmakers we have who are caregivers, the better our laws will be at easing the burdens felt by all.”

By the time it reached the House Judiciary Committee, the measure had steamrolled unamended through two other committees and the full Senate.

The Judiciary chair, Rep. David Tarnas, said he also supported it. But then, perhaps unintentionally, he took a step that ultimately led to its demise. While the original wording called for the bill to take effect upon passage — in time for this year’s election, Tarnas recommended his committee amend it to “defect the effective date to year 3000 to encourage further discussion.”

It’s a common procedural step to keep a bill alive when there are additional issues to be hammered out, but that didn’t seem to be the case here. And when the measure eventually was approved unanimously by the House, that little amendment meant it was headed not straight to the governor’s desk but rather to conference committee.

Then came the final blow: Speaker Scott Saiki failed to appoint House conferees to discuss the measure, automatically killing it.

Another one bites the dust.

Saiki did not respond to a request for an explanation, and Tarnas said he didn’t know why conferees were not appointed.

Another strange twist: Izumi-Natao testified that even without the bill, if candidates reported child care or dependent care expenses as campaign expenses, the Campaign Spending Commission would probably allow them.

But after checking with her staff this week, Izumi-Natao said no one at the commission could recall anyone ever doing that.

So was HB 2405 necessary?

“Absolutely,” she said.

Other Conference Committee Action — Or Inaction

Three other transparency-related measures that Civil Beat was tracking died in the conference committee period.

House Bill 1884 was proposed by the state Ethics Commission and would have required legislators to provide greater disclosures of income received from special interests.

The commission’s executive director, Robert Harris, saw this as a missed opportunity for reform and said he hoped it would be reconsidered next year.

Several bills made it out alive, but most were too minor to mention.

House Bill 2184 would have prohibited political contributions from people convicted of campaign finance, ethical or lobbying offenses. It would have required the recipients of such contributions to turn them over to the fund used for partial public financing of campaigns.

And House Bill 2582 would have excluded “critical infrastructure information” from disclosure requirements of the Uniform Information Practices Act. It was another one of those measures that died due to no conferees being appointed, this time by Senate President Ron Kouchi.

Of course not every government-reform measure that trundles into the conference committee fun house comes out dead. That would be dysfunctional, right?

Several bills made it out alive, but most were too minor to mention. Two measures of note are headed for Gov. Josh Green’s desk.

House Bill 2581 would remove the ability of the governor or a mayor to suspend electronic media transmission during a state of emergency.

As the bill states, “Electronic media could include not only all radio and television broadcasts, but also could potentially include text messages, emails, and posts to social media platforms, which would restrain lawful free speech and publication and violate the First Amendment.”

Senate Bill 2687 would prohibit campaigns from “recklessly” distributing deepfakes — materially deceptive media — and make offenders subject to criminal penalties.

If it’s signed by the governor, it would take effect in time for the upcoming election cycle.

Green signed six other good government bills on Friday.