For a very long time, there has been a culture of silence within Hawaii state government.

This culture has manifested in various ways. In our Legislature, for example, Civil Beat recently reported that legislators just vote yes to move things along, 98 percent of the time.

University of Hawaii Professor Colin Moore found this to be just one of many “procedural habits that minimize visible conflict. Real debates on the floor of the House and Senate are rare. … And many controversial bills are never even scheduled for a hearing. They’re not voted down. They simply vanish.”

Our own research has taken aim at what we call “Blankety Blank” bills, ones that are voted on with blanks in key places and pass anyway … because folks either don’t want to or, more likely, are told not to discuss or de

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