Having passed out of the Hawaii Senate and House, a bill to create a pilot program of full public financing for county council elections on the Big Island now awaits approval by Governor Linda Lingle. The people at Voter-Owned Hawaii have been pursuing public financing for Hawaii's elections for many years -- I hope they'll soon be able to celebrate this victory!

Looks like the controversial amendment that might have doomed the Hawaii public financing pilot program has been taken out of the bill, and it's advancing down the road to approval by the state legislature. The bill would cover a full public financing pilot program for Big Island County Council elections to begin in 2010.

In this guest piece for the Hawaii Reporter, Todd Lange of the Arizona Citizens Clean Election Commission takes on disinformation about Clean Elections presented in a recent editorial by the Center for Responsive Politics. The result is a nice summary of the successes of Arizona's public financing program, and a good argument for the Hawaii legislature to continue to pursue a pilot program of full public financing for county council races -- a proposal that's recently hit a few roadblocks.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin likes the idea of a pilot Clean Elections public financing program for Hawaii County Council elections, seeing such a program as a worthwhile experiment in public financing that could go on to benefit other elections in the state.

Hey, this must have worked! County Council members on Hawai'i's Big Island have endorsed a plan to try out a full public financing system for their races in 2010. This is a good step forward after many years of public support for a Clean Elections-style system met with reticence on the part of legislators to make substantive changes to campaign laws.

Kory Payne of Voter-Owned Hawai'i uses a single example of a secretive government granting process to illustrate the larger need for Hawai'i to upgrade it's partial public financing system to a full public financing system and do away with the need for candidates for public office to run their campaigns with special interest money.