Join Us to Hear About the Loopholes of Hawaii’s Pay-to-Play Law

Hawaii is reeling from one of the largest corruption scandals in its history. Former State Senator J. Kalani English and former State Representative Ty Cullen pleaded guilty in February 2022 to accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes during their time in office. Starting as early as 2014, and continuing until at least 2020, state and local politicians raked in campaign contributions at late-night fund-raising parties.

Hawaii had passed an anti-corruption law in 2005 that was billed as one of the nation’s most ambitious efforts to end pay-to-play government contracting.

Join journalists from The Times and Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit newsroom, for a hybrid discussion about how they uncovered systematic failures in Hawaii’s reform efforts at 10:30 a.m. Hawaii time (4:30 p.m. Eastern time) on Wednesday, July 10. Register here.

Blaze Lovell, the reporter, and Dean Baquet, who edited the investigation, will discuss the project, which included an analysis of hundreds of thousands of campaign contributions and more than 70,000 state contracts. The conversation will be moderated by Patti Epler, the editor and general manager of Civil Beat.

To register for the event and to submit a question for the panelists, visit Civil Beat’s event page. A link to the recording will be sent to everyone who signs up.

The event draws on reporting from The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship, an initiative that gives local journalists a year to produce investigations about their communities.