The campaign against a Constitutional Convention led by public worker unions and the Hawai'i Democratic Party is rooted in dishonesty.

Thoughtful arguments can be made on either side of a ConCon, but we've heard few of these in the ad blitz by the Hawai'i Alliance, the leading "anti" group.

The fear mongering started with claims that if voters call the first ConCon in 30 years, it would be taken over by Mainland special interests.

Well guess what, anti-ConCon ads flooding the airwaves are paid mostly by a Mainland special interest — $350,000 from the National Education Association, lobbying arm of the teachers' union.

Dishonest.

Opponents claim the convention could cost $41 million, citing a misleading report from the Legislative Reference Bureau based on Cadillac parameters set by Democratic ConCon opponents in the Legislature.

The inflation-adjusted cost of the 1978 ConCon, which had a similar number of salaried delegates as the LRB studied, was less than $10 million — even if you add $3 million for first-class facilities the LRB claims are needed.

Dishonest.

Democratic leaders didn't call an anti-ConCon vote at their state convention because they feared independent Barack Obama delegates might buck the party establishment and unions and support a ConCon. Instead of letting a broad spectrum of the party's membership vote, Democrats took it up at a central committee meeting where only insiders could vote.

Dishonest.

Ads opposing a ConCon have featured everybody from Native Hawaiians to environmentalists claiming a convention would take away their rights. The fact is, a ConCon could just as likely clarify Hawaiian rights and extend environmental protections, as occurred at the 1978 convention.

Dishonest.

Most fearful are the teachers, administrators and politicians who feed off of public education; they know our rundown schools, bottom-scraping student test scores and woefully ineffective Board of Education would get critical scrutiny from a ConCon.

The teachers' union, which is paying for most of the anti-ConCon campaign, flails at bogey men like "opponents of public education," but the real fear is that the education establishment will finally be held accountable for the failure of a school system that consumes a fifth of the state's $10 billion operating budget.

They and other ConCon opponents say a convention is unnecessary because constitutional amendments can be proposed by the Legislature.

Former Gov. Ben Cayetano said supporters of a convention "are dissatisfied because they were unable to get certain issues approved by the Legislature. Well, if they are unhappy with their legislators, they should vote them out of office."

Very funny — and dishonest.

The main constitutional amendment passed by the Legislature in the last election set a mechanism that gave lawmakers 54-percent pay raises they didn't have to vote on.

How can we vote legislators out of office when 40 percent of incumbents are running unopposed this year and most of the rest face grossly underfunded opposition — all because of an election system that lets special interests spend wildly to prop up lawmakers who do their bidding?

This twisted system works nicely for Democratic legislators who control 65 of 76 seats, and for the unions and other lobbying groups who control the legislators.

They'll never act legislatively to reform a stacked system that works so much in their favor, and they're deathly afraid that a ConCon would give voters a chance to take back elections with campaign finance controls, term limits, tough ethics codes and initiative, referendum and recall.

Opposition to a ConCon isn't about citizens losing their rights, but about the self-interested losing their lock on power. That's exactly why voters need to shake things up.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. His columns are archived at www.volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog, Volcanic Ash, at vol canicash.honadvblogs.com.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. His columns are archived at www.volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.