Monday, January 01, 2007
OIP to investigate issues around Procurement Policy Board's illegal public access TV meeting
When a board that is obligated to follow the open meeting law holds an unannounced secret meeting, it's illegal as far as I know. So I requested a copy of the minutes. This was the 2-hour-plus meeting at which the state Procurement Policy Board seems to have decided to give Hawaii's public access TV contracts out to bid.
At least that's what it appears they discussed. That's why it's important to have a copy of the minutes. Sure, they could have been arguing about whether to order pizza or fried chicken for the annual Christmas party and it just took a while to decide. Not too likely. As soon as they left their secret meeting they reconvened in public, and against overwhelming testimony, voted to apply the bidding process to these contracts.
My request for minutes was turned down in an unsigned email.
So I requested an investigation of the meeting and of the entire process leading to the PPB's vote. After all, they also took testimony without a quorem and there seem to have been other irregularities.
As the OIP letter to me explains, I could go to court and try to have their decision overturned. A problem with this law is that it has no teeth. I have no money to go to court to enforce it. Maybe someone does, but not me.
So far the press has not picked up on this important issue--that the public could lose `Olelo, Akaku and the other public access TV providers to some special interest organization. If you would like to learn more and hear a variety of voices on this issue, tune in on Thursday, January 4, 2007 to Town Square on Hawaii Public Radio, 89.3 FM, 5-6 p.m. The program also streams on the Internet from hawaiipublicradio.org .
At least that's what it appears they discussed. That's why it's important to have a copy of the minutes. Sure, they could have been arguing about whether to order pizza or fried chicken for the annual Christmas party and it just took a while to decide. Not too likely. As soon as they left their secret meeting they reconvened in public, and against overwhelming testimony, voted to apply the bidding process to these contracts.
My request for minutes was turned down in an unsigned email.
So I requested an investigation of the meeting and of the entire process leading to the PPB's vote. After all, they also took testimony without a quorem and there seem to have been other irregularities.
As the OIP letter to me explains, I could go to court and try to have their decision overturned. A problem with this law is that it has no teeth. I have no money to go to court to enforce it. Maybe someone does, but not me.
So far the press has not picked up on this important issue--that the public could lose `Olelo, Akaku and the other public access TV providers to some special interest organization. If you would like to learn more and hear a variety of voices on this issue, tune in on Thursday, January 4, 2007 to Town Square on Hawaii Public Radio, 89.3 FM, 5-6 p.m. The program also streams on the Internet from hawaiipublicradio.org .
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