Formal Opinions

Opinion Letter No. 04-12 July 9, 2004 Disclosure of Intra-office Email Messages [Please note that opinions discussing the deliberative process privilege have been materially affected by the Hawaii Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Peer News LLC v. City and County of...

Opinion Letter No. 04-11 June 30, 2004 Personal Information of Petition and Nominating Paper Signatories The Hawaii County Clerk requested an opinion of the OIP regarding whether the public has a right to inspect and copy petitions which contain personal...

Opinion Letter No. 04-10 June 29, 2004 Right to Testify on Agenda Items A county charter provision barring county employees from representing private interests before a county agency does not conflict with the Sunshine Law. The Sunshine Law requires boards...

Opinion Letter No. 04-09 May 3, 2004 Anonymous Testimony and Liability for Disclosure of Records Containing Defamatory Statements [NOTE:  This opinion was partially overruled by OIP Op. Ltr. No. 06-04.] The OIP was asked for an opinion on receipt and...

Opinion Letter No. 04-08 April 2, 2004 Lists of Voters The General County Register required to be maintained by the County Clerk under section 11-14, HRS, which contains, among other things, the name and address of each voter, is not...

Opinion Letter No. 04-07 March 25, 2004 Evaluation and Expectations of University of Hawaii President The University of Hawaii (“UH”) Board of Regents’ evaluation of UH President Evan Dobelle (“Evaluation”) and the Expectations and Performance Guidelines prepared by the Board...

Opinion Letter No. 04-06 March 23, 2004 Disclosure of Court Abstracts The Judiciary asked the OIP whether the UIPA requires public access to court abstracts and miscellaneous criminal abstracts of the Traffic Violations Bureau of the District Courts. The Judiciary...

Opinion Letter No. 04-05 February 23, 2004 Honolulu Police Commission Records A member of the public requested access to records of the Honolulu Police Commission (“Commission”) pertaining to investigations of complaints against police officers convicted of police brutality. The Commission...

Opinion Letter No. 04-04 February 20, 2004 Board Decisionmaking Outside of Open Meetings The Hawaii Civil Rights Commission (“HCRC”) asked the OIP whether it could poll the Commissioners relating to the agency’s legislative testimony. The OIP advised that the Sunshine...

Opinion Letter No. 04-03 February 9, 2004 Tourism Data The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (“DBEDT”) asked the OIP if it can charge a requester for segregating information that a business has designated, with DBEDT’s concurrence, as proprietary...