Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

With all the activity at the Legislature, I missed this two-month anniversary by a couple of days.

On March 1, 2012 I posted an article identifying three recent financial disclosure forms that contain rather obvious omissions that I felt the Ethics Commission should have caught.

On April 4, 2012 I posted a follow-up article pointing out that the erroneous forms are still on the Ethics Commission website, and there are no amended forms posted. As far as I can tell, there has been no action against the three legislators (though obviously, the Ethics Commission would not let me know if they did take action).

It’s now two months later, and there are no amended forms posted on the Ethics Commission website for these legislators.

Here’s a recap of the  issue. In alphabetic order:

Rep. Rida T.R. Cabanilla Arakawa’s 2012 financial disclosure apparently fails to disclose income, as required

On Senator Donavan Dela Cruz’s May 19, 2011 filing he simply checked the box indicating no changes to report since last filing. But his last filing was 12/9/10 which showed him as a Councilmember. Oops!

Rep. Scott Nishimoto also just checked the same box. He doesn’t report his House of Representatives job.

Each legislator signs the bottom of the form, which looks like this:

Note that it states that it is a violation of state law if information is not disclosed and that there are statutory penalties for noncompliance.

But so what? There’s clearly no cop on the beat.

I’ll check the Ethics Commission website again next month.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 5/09/2012 02:52:00 PM