Trust me, I’m from the government: After watching the post-session axing of his House counterpart as chairman of the Finance Committee, Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz is defending the controversial process the money chairs use at the end of each legislative session to kill bills.

The chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee sent out a newsletter to constituents Friday titled, “The Critical Role of Committees in Fiscal Oversight and Budget Balancing.”

In it he defended the money chairs’ macabre tradition of not granting “release” to many dozens of bills in the session’s final hours, thus derailing them.

Victims this last session included crucial governmental reform measures to address pay-to-play politics that had already passed both chambers of the Legislature but went to conference committee to resolve differences in amendments.

“There is a thought in some circles that the WAM-FIN release process is a way to defer measures, however, that isn’t the case,” Dela Cruz wrote.

“It is WAM and FIN’s responsibility to balance the financial plan inclusive of all appropriations,” he wrote. “This is why the fiscal release process to provide approval on funding bills and bills that have fiscal impact is so critical.”

The problem is that many of the measures determined to “have fiscal impact” actually do not. In fact, of the 3,172 bills introduced this session, 2,141 were initially referred to the money committees — 67%.

That’s why Senate Judiciary Chair Karl Rhoads recently referred to them as the “stopper committees.”

Change may be coming, at least in the House, where Rep. Kyle Yamashita lost his Finance Committee chairmanship to Rep. Chris Todd after the session.

Todd almost immediately sounded a reformist note, saying  he thought fewer measures should be under control of the money chairs.

But with Dela Cruz defending the status quo, The Blog isn’t expecting any corresponding reform in the Senate.

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Watching his own shadow: Josh Green is still governor of Hawaiʻi, but his efforts to debunk the vaccine-skeptical rhetoric of Republicans in general and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in particular continue to garner national attention.

Politico, a national online news organization, recently offered up suggestions for a “Shadow Cabinet” of “fresh faces who can give the Democratic Party a sleek new look.” Its choices include billionaire Mark Cuban as secretary of commerce and comedian/talk show host Jon Stewart as secretary of veterans affairs.

Unorthodox choices for national office? Maybe in the old days, but not so much since billionaire businessman Donald J. Trump descended an escalator and got himself elected president twice.

But Politico didn’t entirely eschew current officeholders, including you-know-who for secretary of health and human services.

“Hawaii Gov. Josh Green is, in effect, already serving as a shadow HHS secretary, as he often sits for television interviews to counter the vaccine skepticism peddled by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Politico wrote.

The Blog thinks “shadow HHS secretary” has a ring to it, almost as catchy as “the anti-RFK,” the informal title bestowed on Green by Hawaiʻi political commentator John Hart.

Why not? As a governor and a medical doctor, Green is already used to wearing multiple hats.

Media matters: The Blog is old enough to remember the days when newsrooms were filled with the clacking of typewriters and the static of police traffic playing on the scanner. But that was then and this is now where newsrooms are more like libraries and scanners have been put off limits by police agencies that don’t want the public listening in on their radio calls.

Some mainland cities have found ways to use encrypted channels and other commnications technology for sensitive discussions and have let the media back onto the airwaves for general dispatches.

The Honolulu Police Department has remained true to its overall theory that people shouldn’t really know what it’s doing anyway and has dug in its heels on scanners. HPD took them away from public ears a few years ago and has refused to find a compromise like their mainland counterparts have done.

Now City Council Chair Tommy Waters is coming to the rescue of the news media. Last week he filed a bill that would give the press and the public their scanners back. It’s slated to be heard sometime in the next few weeks and The Blog expects we’ll see a number of journalists, especially those familiar TV faces, lining up to testify in support (even though it is highly unethical for journalists to testify or lobby on public policy matters before legislative bodies, for obvious reasons. But hey, this is Hawaiʻi, where they do it anyway.)