KAILUA-KONA — The media and public can now find Hawaii County documents and correspondence for all departments in one spot online.
In a Facebook post Tuesday, Mayor Harry Kim’s office wrote: In the interests of being transparent, your County government is posting online all public record correspondence, including Legislative testimony. Just click on this link:http://records.co.hawaii.hi.us/weblink/Browse.aspx?dbid=1
One of Kim’s promises to the public during his campaign run for mayor was to improve transparency in the county. This site is the county’s way of fulfilling that promise.
“We have to realize the need to improve the communication to the people,” Kim said.
Since Kim was elected, he said, policies have been put in place where any county employee can speak to the media. The only time an employee would not speak is when it deals with personnel or litigation matters.
“Other than that, they can release whatever they want out of their department,” Kim said about the new site.
The mayor said if there is information that is not on the site, it can be directly requested.
Concerns about answering public records requests was an issue for some residents in the past. Last month, West Hawaii Today reported about persistent records requests from three Kailua-Kona residents that put state and county agencies on the defensive, leading to attempts to clamp down on those they think ask for too much information.
On the state level, the House has so far looked kindly on a bill bringing back legislation against so-called “vexatious” records requesters, allowing agencies to ignore requests from individuals declared vexatious by the state Office of Information Practices, OIP.
On the county level, Kim is trying to broker peace between resident, Aaron Stene and the director of the county Department of Public Works, who banned the resident’s phone calls and emails because his staff was feeling harried from frequent, multiple questions.
Stene had no comment in regards to the new site.
Local news blogger Damon Tucker has followed Kim since his campaign. While he thought the site made things easier to find documents, Tucker said, he’d seen the files before.
He added if the mayor’s office wants to get information out to the public, they need to use social media.
The mayors office has been posting on Facebook and Twitter. As of Tuesday evening, Kim had 23 tweets on Twitter and approximately 40 posts on Facebook.
While he does not have the expertise himself, Kim said, there people in the mayor’s office who are working on social media.