Every year significant government reforms are proposed at the Hawaiʻi Legislature, and every year — so far at least — many are shot down.

Prohibit pay-to-play political contributions.

Expand public campaign finance.

Lengthen the legislative session.

They’ll all be coming back for another try in the 2026 session, as they should. But give some credit to the Hawaiʻi State Ethics Commission, which will be proposing some new ideas come January.

One of them would prohibit new state employees from helping out their former employers during a “cooling off period” after they change jobs. Sort of the reverse of restricting the activities of government officials who leave their posts to join, say, a lobbying firm.

Executive Director Robert Harris said the proposal arose from the commission staff’s experience handling complaints about newly appointed or hired state officials.

Another would prohibit high-level executive branch employees from engaging in political fundraising.

Commissioner Cynthia Thielen is pushing this one, a restriction she’s wanted ever since she read the 2024 Civil Beat/New York Times account of a state official’s late-night parties where developers and lobbyists contributed to key legislators.

And Commission Chair Wesley Fong is pushing his colleagues to take another run at strengthening the state’s anti-nepotism law so that it would apply to the legislative and judicial branches.

Right now the Senate and House have their own nepotism policies, but they’re rules, not laws.

Drafts of all three bills can be read online in the commission’s packet of information from its Oct. 15 meeting. Traditionally the commission’s proposed bills are introduced on its behalf by the Senate president and House speaker.

‘Cooling Off’ New State Employees

The measure addressing new state workers’ relationships with their former employers is based on federal law but “we’d be on the cutting edge” at the state level, Harris told the commissioners at the meeting.

“This is really a forward-looking proposal,” Harris said. “The idea is to try to create confidence that employees coming into state service are going to be focused on state service and that they’re going to be hands-off of anything they’ve dealt with for former clients.”

Commissioners liked the idea so much that they asked Harris to expand it before their next meeting Nov. 19.

The original draft called for the proposed “cooling-off period” to last one year, but they voted to lengthen that to two years.

And the draft directed any new employee to not “take official action on any matter for which the employee received compensation from a private business or source.” But commissioners encouraged Harris and his staff to consider widening the restrictions to include other interactions between the new employees and their old bosses.

Finally, the draft bill did not apply the restrictions to new legislators, prompting Commission Chair Fong to ask, “Why not?”

Stay tuned to see what emerges next month.

‘Most Unethical Thing I’ve Ever Seen’

Thielen joined the Ethics Commission last year and immediately began advocating to prohibit highly placed executive branch officials from engaging in campaign fundraising.

Thielen said the pay-to-play evidence uncovered in the Civil Beat/New York Times piece was “the most unethical thing I’ve ever seen.”

For many years, it was reported, a senior Transportation Department official hosted soirees where lobbyists and executives seeking government contracts lined up to drop cash and checks into a metal lockbox, with the gifts divvied up by public officeholders later in the evening.

While the report has spurred ongoing attempts to prohibit political contributions by people personally connected to state contractors and grantees, Thielen is the first to propose a ban on campaign fundraising by top executive branch officials.

During the last few Ethics Commission meetings, Thielen has watched closely as her proposal to prohibit such activities was vetted and amended — sometimes under the influence of the Attorney General’s Office.

“I like the way the bill has been narrowed and focused on exactly what we’re trying to do to eliminate the pay-to-play by aiming this bill at those who are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the Senate,” Thielen said at the Oct. 15 meeting. “That person has oversight, management or procurement authority over state contracts with a value greater than $100,000. I think that makes sense.”

Her original draft would have applied much more broadly to executive branch officials involved with contracts greater than $5,000.

Still Pushing Hard

While she supports the changes, she also sought assurances at the meeting that they would be completed in time for the measure to be introduced for the coming session. She asked that the term “pay-to-play” be inserted into the description at the top of the bill and suggested it be the lead bill in the commission’s package to the Legislature.

“It takes a lot of effort,” Thielen said in an interview with Civil Beat earlier this year, comparing her endeavor to “pushing a boulder uphill.”

“You have to recognize part of the privilege of being in that elite group is that there are going to be ethical restrictions on you getting involved in fundraising,” Thielen said. “We’re not talking about hundreds of people, but we’re talking about people with a great deal of power and influence.”

“There’s a lot of players that don’t want things to change. They like it the way it is.”

State Ethics Commission member Cynthia Thielen

Noting that Thielen herself had been a member of the House of Representatives for 30 years before joining the commission, Fong complimented her “foresight.”

“Thank you for your initiative, especially coming from a former legislator,” he said.

Now comes the hardest part: Convincing today’s lawmakers to pass the bill.

“There’s a lot of players that don’t want things to change,” Thielen told Civil Beat. “They like it the way it is.”

Chair Adopts A Cause Of His Own

While Thielen crusades for one reform, the commission chair is making a personal appeal for another: applying the state’s anti-nepotism law to the legislative branch.

“Before my term is over, I’d like to make sure that we somehow try to convince the Legislature in regards to nepotism,” said Fong at the commission’s July 16 meeting. “What worries me, all due respect to our legislators, is they’re going to self-police.”

“I just think what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” said Fong, whose term ends June 30, 2026.

Nepotism was outlawed for state employees when the Legislature passed a bill in 2023 that prohibited “the hiring or supervising of a relative or household member or awarding of contracts to businesses owned by relatives or household members.”

“What worries me, all due respect to our legislators, is they’re going to self-police.”

State Ethics Commission Chair Wesley Fong

But that didn’t happen until after House Judiciary Chair David Tarnas amended the measure to exempt the legislative and judicial branches.

Tarnas said he did so because the House just adopted its own rules against nepotism — something the Senate had done three years earlier. According to the state constitution, he said, “the Legislature shall manage and discipline and regulate ourselves.”

That notion didn’t sit well with 19 of 25 senators, who voted “yes with reservations” to approve the 2023 measure because they didn’t think legislators should be exempted from the law even if they did have their own rules.

Those rules can be found in the administrative and financial manuals of the House and Senate. Interestingly, the House version applies only to people hired after the rules were adopted in 2023.

It didn’t apply, for instance, to one longstanding family connection that still existed in the House at the time: the 17 years that  May Mizuno worked as chief of staff and office manager for her husband, then-Rep. John Mizuno. A year later, Gov. Josh Green appointed her to replace her husband in the House when he was hired as Green’s coordinator on homelessness.

At the October meeting, Fong noted that another measure to apply the anti-nepotism law to the legislative and judicial branches was proposed last session by seven senators, but didn’t receive a hearing from Tarnas’ committee.

Fong said his proposed bill, which was unanimously approved by the Ethics Commission members, “just really brings everybody into the fold. It should apply to everybody.”

Civil Beat Ideas Editor Patti Epler contributed to this report.