What You Won't Learn From Honolulu Council Financial Disclosure Forms

Adrienne LaFrance/Civil Beat

Financial disclosure forms are the basis by which the public can judge possible conflicts of interest for elected officials.

Civil Beat exposed flaws with the forms at the state level. It found lawmakers not reporting stock they owned or listing any dependents with stocks or mutual funds and errors in the reporting of the value of real estate investments.

An examination of the disclosures of Honolulu's nine City Council members reveals that there are also problems at the local level.

Part of the problem may be that the language in some of the questions on the forms isn't as straightforward as it could be, according to Chuck Totto, executive director for the city ethics commission.

"I guess the normal practice is that we'd be relying on whatever the interpretation of the filer is," Totto said. "That interpretation then is going to be at varying levels of sophistication... A lot of this is an honor system. That may sound naive, or even ridiculous in this day and age. But hopefully, especially at the high levels of government, people are watching each other and requiring one another to make sure those disclosures get in."

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