In reporting on the April 5 meeting of the board of directors of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority, Environment Hawai`i has had to rely on accounts of people present. In his haste to arrange the meeting, NELHA administrator Ron Baird failed to comply with that part of Hawai`i law requiring notice of meetings be given to members of the public requesting such notice six days in advance. As a result, we did not learn of the meeting until the week following. (Even then, it was only as a result of sheer happenstance that we found out.)
Calls to the NELHA office requesting an opportunity to review tapes of the meeting were forwarded by staff to Baird, who, by press time, had not responded to them. Deputy attorney general Bryan Yee said Baird would make an edited tape (without the recording of an executive session) available to Environment Hawai`i,but by press time, Baird had not done so.
Yee also said that no action would be taken on the basis of the Apri 5 meeting and that the board would hold a properly noticed meeting to reconsider the items taken up then.
This is not the first time the NELHA board has fallen short of the mark in meeting the requirements of the state’s Sunshine Law. In 2004, responding to a complaint filed by Environment Hawai`i, the OIP [Office of Information Practices] determined that the board had failed to give a reason in its public meeting for entering into executive session. In 2005, the tenants’ organization, Keahole Point Association, lodged a complaint over the meetings of the board’s Finance Investigative Committee. The OIP found that the committee “was not acting as an investigative group such as would be permitted” by law. That same year, Senator Les Ihara, Jr., complained to the OIP that the NELHA board was, yet again, failing to announced publicly reasons for entering into an executive session, failing to record the members making and seconding the motion for executive session, and failing to record the members’ votes. Again, the OIP upheld the complaint.
— Patricia Tummons
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