Some Hawaii Agencies Are Pushing A Bill That Would Limit Public Access To Government Records … The bill would roll back a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling that opened up many records to the public, including draft documents and records that show how an agency came to a decision.
The University of Hawaii and other state agencies are asking lawmakers to make it easier to restrict public access to a whole class of government records, a move that would undermine a far-reaching ruling by the state Supreme Court in 2018.
House Bill 2303 would amend the state open records law to specifically allow public agencies to keep secret certain “drafts, internal memoranda and correspondence” and other “pre-decisional materials” that are part of the agencies’ internal decision-making processes.
The proposed new law would allow those records to be withheld from the public if disclosure “would impair the agency’s ability to make sound and fair decisions, but only to the extent that such impairment outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
