Kauai: Things Ain’t That Different in the Middle of the Pacific

I was fortunate enough to have a vacation to the island of Kauai, Hawaii for 11 days.  I highly recommend it to anyone that may be looking for a little R&R in one of the most beautiful places in the world.  Being a political junkie and a geek, I actually spent some time (mostly while changing of something) watching the goings on of their Kauai County Council.  Their proceedings are recorded and are broadcast on what appeared to be a loop (although I never saw the same thing twice).  This was a refreshing change from what we see here in New Castle County, where the council won’t even put the recordings up on the web for citizens, let alone broadcasting them.

There appears to still be a battle for transparency and access for many documents from Kauai’s government.  I watched as a new Councilman, Tim Bynum (yes, I remembered his name) was trying to work his way through a mountain of political power in the County Council President.  He has been battling to get changes made to the Council rules that would allow him to offer up a transparency resolution.  Apparently he can’t even get the thing on the agenda.  The desk drawer veto that has plagued Delaware politics for years takes the form of refusing to get the item on the agenda.

Councilman Bynum and his ally, Lani Kawahara have apparently started a shadow government information site,  to publish documents that they get that should be public.  They hopes to phase it out once Kauai’s council gets their act together.  He had a great example of using technology to address the problems.  He suggested that they could have a scanner right there in the council chambers that if a document came up for discussion, even if it just walked in with someone giving testimony, it could be scanned and be on the web immediately for public access.

Alas, Mr. Bynum still has a number of battles to wage before they get to that.  I wish him and us luck.