Paying to play: House Judiciary chair David Tarnas seems to be the driving force this session behind the efforts to crack down (sort of) on contractors and nonprofit grantees who also contribute to political campaigns.

Both Tarnas and Senate Judiciary chair Karl Rhoads passed out the last two House and Senate bills left that address what has been one of the biggest reform issues of the past several years. On Thursday, Tarnas stripped the Senate bill and inserted his own measure, saying “I prefer the House version of the bill.”

The next day, Rhoads ignored testimony from numerous people including the Campaign Spending Commission over the House bill and mucked things up even further with more amendments that would appear to now exclude family members from any restrictions.

“This is a difficult bill,” was his general remark about things.

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Here’s the thing: House Bill 1519, which seems to be the blueprint for pay-to-play reform this year, really only covers campaign donations to executive branch candidates (that would be just the governor and lieutenant governor) and not people running for the 76 legislative seats or numerous county council positions. That was basically the last iteration of the pay-to-play bill from last session that died a highly publicized but unexplained death in the Legislature’s final days when legislative leaders opposed even that watered down version.

This year the bill also removed county candidates from any restrictions on donations from county contractors or grantees. The Blog guesses lawmakers have forgotten that the bribery scandal that took down two of their own (and still haunts the State Capitol in the form of a mystery legislator ferreted out by the FBI) began when the feds discovered Milton Choy, a Honolulu businessman, had given what turned out to be $2 million in bribes to a Maui County official. They then turned Choy into an informant against Rep. Ty Cullen and Sen. J. Kalani English. And the rest is history.

Tarnas told fellow committee members (who had remarkably little to say about the bill as the chair dictated its content before calling for the vote) that his version of HB 1519 is what lawmakers had agreed on last year in conference committee. So that’s what he’s doing this year. So there.

Yet all session, testifiers and even some lawmakers have been decrying what some have called “major loopholes” in the House version, largely because contractors would only be restricted from donating to candidates running for office in the branch of government that oversees their contract.

As people argued last year when this came up at the end of session, there are very few contracts administered by the legislative branch and the vast majority are overseen by the executive branch. And good-government advocates as well as reform-minded lawmakers have questioned this element all session including when the House Finance Committee took up the bill last month.

The Senate version, Senate Bill 2530, was heavily favored by the Campaign Spending Commission and other good-government advocates. But now that Tarnas has replaced it with his own House version; the watered-down version is the only one left standing. Both bills are headed to their respective money committees.

SB 2530, now the Tarnas bill, also might cause some heartburn for the House Finance Committee if and when it gets a hearing before the end of session, which is coming up in early May. Tarnas also added in hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Campaign Spending Commission to properly oversee contractor/grantee restrictions. That includes more than $200,000 to build a new password-protected database for contractors (yep, the public is being shut out of scrutiny) and another $150,000 for a new IT employee to deal with it all.

So maybe Tarnas and Rhoads know something the advocates for real and meaningful reform don’t: that this year’s pay-to-play bills are already dead, so why bother.

Check out what’s been happening with pay-to-play on our Digital Democracy site, where you can easily go straight to discussions on the bills, follow along on a transcript and find much more information. Just type the bill number into the search bar.

Explore detailed legislator profiles, voting records and what happens in hearings on Digital Democracy.

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Nice try: State Rep. Elija Pierick is pleading “oops” to his latest violation of campaign spending laws. The Hawaiʻi Campaign Spending Commission on Wednesday fined Pierick $275 for failure to report expenditures related to a district-wide campaign mailer and for violating the state law on political advertisement disclaimers.

“I appreciate you guys wanting to maintain ethics and candidates to follow the rules,” Pierick told the commission, noting that he had amended his filing. “The spirit of the law is that we’re following the rules, that we’re trying to be transparent with the community and letting them know what’s going on. And that’s my intent, that’s my heart, it’s my spirit.”

It was not Pierick’s first violation with the Campaign Spending Commission. He was fined $1,000 in 2025 for failing to report several contributions and expenditures.

Pierick, a Republican who represents House District 39 on Oʻahu, is running for Senate District 19, a seat currently held by Democrat Rachele Lamosao. She was appointed to the seat in December to replace Henry Aquino, who stepped down for a lobbying gig. The complaint was made by former state Sen. Clarence Nishihara, also a Democrat.

Legislator X: Unnamed lawmaker. Mysterious legislator. Kudos to the Big Island Press Club for coming up with a fresh way to describe the unknown elected official who accepted a paper bag containing $35,000 back in 2022.

“Legislator X,” according to the club, has been awarded its annual Lava Tube dishonor for 2025.

“Ethical — and perhaps legal — breaches aren’t usually a subject of the Big Island Press Club’s Lava Tube award. But a lack of transparency is. Thus Legislator X, who we still can’t identify, is the winner of this year’s Lava Tube award,” said BIPC board member Nancy Cook Lauer in a press release Monday, which marks the birthday of James Madison.

The Big Island Press Club’s annual meritorious Torch of Light Award goes to Mark Recktenwald, the former chief justice of the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court who hung up his black robe last fall after 15 years as the CJ.

“Under his watch, Hawaiʻi state courts rolled out electronic filing and implemented remote proceedings statewide,” the club noted. “More cameras came into the courtroom and access to court documents was simplified. Recktenwald, a former UPI reporter stationed in Honolulu, understands the importance of a free press and its role in democracy.”

Pretty in pink: Hawaiʻi youth rallied in the Capitol Rotunda Wednesday to urge action on disposable e-cigarettes.

“Breathe Aloha: 808 no vape,” read the pink T-shirts.

The occasion was Take Down Tobacco National Day of Action, and the bills in focus were House Bill 2121 and Senate Bill 2175, which would end the sale of disposable e-cigarettes in the state. E-cigs, supporters of the bills say, have created “a dual crisis” of severe environmental pollution and public health risks. 

“Sales of disposable electronic devices grew by 500% between 2019 and 2023, making them the most common type of device among young people,” according to a press release promoting the rally.

“You’re showing up to lead all the adults out there that maybe didn’t take the time to come down to the Capitol to pass legislation and save their lives,” Gov. Josh Green told the youth.

The rally was organized by the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Hawai‘i’s Youth Council, a program of the Hawai‘i Public Health Institute.