Fifty years ago, Hawaiʻi was considered a national leader in what was then a growing movement to crack down on inappropriate political influence by big-money special interests. In 1975, Hawaiʻi was requiring lobbyists to register with the state and by 1978 we had created one of the first ethics commissions in the country to oversee them.

But things soon stalled. While other states were moving forward with more disclosure, more frequent reporting and tougher enforcement, Hawaiʻi remained stuck, for the most part, with the barest of transparency requirements and minimal punishment for those who failed to register or who violated the other basic rules.

Then, in 2022, two state lawmakers and a couple of Maui County officials got busted by the feds for taking millions of dollars in bribes from a Honolulu businessman to sway legislation or steer contracts his company’s way.

Even the Legislature couldn’t ignore the public outrage and things quickly improved. A blue-ribbon commission recommended a raft of good-government reforms, including a number of long-talked-about improvements to the state lobbying laws. In the 2023 legislative session lawmakers finally strengthened the rules around lobbying and lobbyists and put in place more meaningful enforcement. A few more measures passed in 2024.

Now it’s 2025, a bit more than five decades since people first started advocating for more insight and accountability regarding the influence of paid lobbyists on legislation.

This year, lawmakers are being asked to consider one significant new measure — expanding the definition of “lobbying” to the procurement process. Translation: people who meet with the governor, administrative staff or other executive agencies seeking state money for major projects or programs would be considered lobbyists and need to disclose those efforts.

Robert Harris, the executive director of the State Ethics Commission, says the requirement would make the state contracting and procurement process more visible and thus more fair. He pointed to a 2022 story by Civil Beat about Kevin Johnson, a former pro basketball star who became mayor of Sacramento and who went to great lengths to get Hawaiʻi officials to approve the Hu Honua biomass energy project on the Big Island. That inside look at Hu Honua’s meetings with key government officials helped convince the commission that trying to influence the executive branch should be treated the same as lobbying the Legislature.

Two weeks ago, House Bill 412 cleared the House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee with unanimous approval. It awaits a vote by the full House and then crosses over to the Senate for consideration.

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The bill “represents a measured and thoughtful improvement to Hawaiʻi’s lobbying framework,” Harris told the committee in his written testimony. “By enhancing transparency, accountability and fairness in government contracting, this measure establishes a regulatory environment that curbs undue influence and fosters equitable competition. These reforms ultimately benefit taxpayers, businesses and the integrity of Hawaiʻi’s government.”

But it isn’t the first time lawmakers have been asked to bring the high-level meetings and power politics that take place in the governor’s office and other state offices into public view. Legislators have long resisted tightening the rules or cracking down on a political ecosystem that thrives on relationships and close connections built over years of doing business at the State Capitol and fueled by special-interest money.

You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

Civil Beat first took a deep dive into Hawaiʻi’s lobbying world soon after we launched the news website in 2010.

In 2011-12, we participated in a 50-state initiative spearheaded by the Center for Public Integrity that sought to compare accountability and transparency in state governments nationwide. We used the same 330 indicators over 14 topic areas that reporters in every other state were also analyzing.

The Hawaiʻi Accountability Project gave the state an overall grade of C for how we stacked up in areas like access to information, campaign finance, executive accountability, legislative accountability, judicial accountability, budgeting, civil service management, procurement, internal auditing, lobbying disclosure, pension fund management, ethics enforcement, insurance commissions and redistricting.

But lobbying disclosure got a D-. And this for a state that had been a national leader.

That caught the attention of local leaders including Peter Adler, a veteran facilitator who gathered a group of local journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, people who hire lobbyists, state officials and government watchdogs with the goal of seeing if there were things Hawaiʻi could do to improve its score.

They spent a year meeting, talking about profound political issues and writing a lengthy report, which was published in 2014. Reading that document more than 10 years later is an eye-opening reminder that it shouldn’t take a major corruption scandal to put in place measures that make public scrutiny of government easier.

Even the Adler group struggled to take a hard line. They stopped short of issuing recommendations and instead couched the findings as “ideas for future discussion.”

At least one idea has taken hold in a big way. The improvement in electronic databases that the state uses to track lobbyist filings (as well as campaign finance and personal financial disclosures by state officials) has been stunning.

When Adler’s group was meeting, lobbyist filings were only available on hard copy and only accessible by going to the Ethics Commission office in downtown Honolulu. Now the lobbying database is searchable at the click of a mouse (pro tip: select “advanced search” in the green navigation bar) along with other databases maintained by the commission. The electronic search has been in place since 2019 but was substantially upgraded in early 2024.

Harris says he hopes that the Campaign Spending Commission reports on contributions, expenditures and other information will someday soon be more easily interfaced with lobbying reports to allow quick tracking of relationships.

The 2013 study group also had broad discussions on how the relationships and job connections between lobbyists and legislators are often at the heart of how the public’s business gets done. The members noted that at the time, lobbyists or the entities they work for were not required to disclose business relationships with lawmakers or their spouses or close relatives.

That’s changed thanks to a measure passed in 2023 that now requires state lawmakers to put that kind of information on their financial disclosures, also available on the Ethics Commission website. (Civil Beat also maintains a searchable, sortable database of public officials’ financial disclosures on its website.)

Lobbyists still aren’t required to disclose what boards they sit on or memberships in nonprofits or special interest organizations. And they still don’t have to report which candidates they are giving contributions to, although that information can be teased out through a search of campaign finance reports for individual candidates.

Other ideas raised by the Adler group that still haven’t been put in place even though they’ve been brought up again and again over the years:

• More frequent reporting. Require monthly filings instead of three times a year as is now the case.
• Make legislators’ calendars public record. Allow people to see who is coming to their offices for official meetings.
• Disclose the authors of bills. Many bills are submitted “by request” but don’t say who is requesting the measure, let alone who wrote it. That should go for legislation as it evolves too, especially as lobbyists hand lawmakers suggested wording or changes to bills as they are moving through the process, including conference committees.

Another suggestion by the group was to require much more detailed information about what the lobbyist was lobbying on, not just a general “subject area” that is listed on a state form.

This year for the first time, thanks to a law passed in 2023, lobbyists will be required to specify every bill they are lobbying on. That was always a dealbreaker for lobbyists that track hundreds of bills for a dozen different clients. But new software developed by the Ethics Commission makes it relatively easy and those details should start showing up on reports due March 31.

Mandatory training has also been in place the last two years. The Ethics Commission now can easily track which lobbyists are not complying.

The Effect Of Recent Reform

In 2013, there were 271 registered lobbyists. In 2024, there were 581 registered lobbyists and 498 lobbying organizations, according to the commission’s annual report.

For decades, advocates for reform have worried that getting too strict with lobbyists or requiring too much disclosure will mean they just will ignore the rules. After all, the punishment has been marginal and there are simply too many small lobbyists for the state to keep track of.

Harris has no real concerns about the major professional lobbyists, the ones who have multiple major clients or have been lobbying for the same well-known organizations for years. The concern is more over people who push legislation on behalf of one client — a small nonprofit or other organization that has limited issues for the Legislature to address. Those make up the bulk of the lobbyist community, he says.

“I’m very impressed with the lobbying community in general and how compliant and willing they are to do these things,” he says. “I think we’ve made huge strides in making the information more public and visible.”

Bob Toyofuku has been a lobbyist for more than 40 years. He decided to retire from active lobbying this year, although he’ll keep his hand in the political business as a consultant (that means he’ll meet with clients but not legislators) and a trainer, giving seminars through a private institute he set up to provide continuing legal education and other training on lobbying and the law.

He says the new tighter rules on lobbyists and lobbying don’t bother him too much because he believes in transparency and he has a couple of assistants and an office manager to help with the paperwork. Some requirements seem to lack common sense, and he does wonder whether the public even cares.

“I may be tracking 140 bills (for one client) and then at one point I have 16 clients. At some point it becomes meaningless to the public,” he says.

Toyofuku says he’s never bought into the criticism that taking legislators to lunch, which is now prohibited, or bringing them a box of manapua, also banned, is going to convince them to support a bill.

“Most lobbyists don’t think going to lunch, even if he or she is the chair, is going to push a bill out. Lunch is inconsequential,” he says. “I never ever thought if I brought bentos in for the staff that was going to push a bill through. Now, if I take a legislator to La Mer or the Halekulani and spend $100 on dinner, that’s consequential.”

He was happy to see the change in 2023 that prohibits lobbyists from giving campaign contributions to a legislator during session as well as five days before and five days after. That let lobbyists off the hook from feeling like they had to go to a fundraiser and give a donation.

He has mixed feelings about the move this session to expand the definition of lobbying to those who are meeting with state officials, in addition to elected lawmakers.

“Sometimes I think there’s a fine line between going in to lobby for a client” and just meeting with the governor, for instance. “I don’t think that’s that bad but can see where the public would feel that’s a disadvantage to the company that doesn’t have a lobbyist.”

“I think transparency from a policy standpoint is good. However, the public at large, they don’t pay attention.”