The basic corruption at the heart of Hawai'i's political system was laid bare in the Advertiser series by Rob Perez about the Legislature's secretive process for awarding grants to local charities.

Lawmakers have doled out some $200 million to nonprofits in the last five years with no formal criteria to guide themselves or the charities, no public hearings and no transparent follow-up to see if the money is spent effectively to serve public priorities.

The charities that benefit are selected by a handful of Democratic lawmakers in a process that is unusually closed by national standards; most legislators don't see the list of nonprofits receiving funding until the budget bill comes up for final approval at the end of the session.

In the House, grant proposals are screened by a subcommittee of one — North Shore Rep. Michael Magaoay, a minor player who has barely fended off challenges from Republican Carol Phillips in the last three elections.

Since taking over the charities post in 2003, Magaoay was the only House member to raise a campaign bankroll of more over $100,000 in the 2004 and 2006 election cycles, after collecting only $30,000 in 2002.

He denies politically exploiting his power over nonprofits, but his campaign fundraisers openly admit they target people associated with the charities in raising money for Magaoay.

According to a computer-assisted analysis by Perez, 70 percent of his campaign funds have come from the nonprofit community in the last two elections.

Some involved with charities are afraid to criticize for fear of being cut off and others shrug it off as "the way the game is played," in the words of Bill Paty, a campaign fundraiser for Magaoay and himself a board member of a nonprofit that receives grants from the Legislature.

But it seems especially low to shake down charity workers for political donations, and there's something fundamentally wrong when people feel they must tithe legislators to raise money to do good deeds in the community.

The process "becomes a matter of political payoffs" when grants aren't awarded according to clear criteria based on merit, said Sid Rosen of of Adult Friends for Youth.

"I think local politics in general — everybody has to pay to play," said Debbie Shimizu of the Hawai'i chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

"I think it stinks," said Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. "It's inappropriate, particularly picking on nonprofits."

The best defense lawmakers can offer is that what they're doing isn't illegal, but the only reason this legalized bribery persists is because legislators zealously protect their own interests by annually rejecting bills to bar campaign kickbacks from those who receive funding from the Legislature.

Gov. Linda Lingle displayed an appalling lack of leadership by declining to comment on the issue, except to tell Perez through a spokesman that the grant process was transparent when she was mayor of Maui.

Who cares what she claims to have done on Maui 10 years ago? When she was elected governor in 2002, she promised to bring integrity to state government. Why isn't she leading the charge to clean up this corrupt process instead of sitting mute and letting it go on?

If the Legislature refuses to be open in making grants, there's nothing stopping Lingle from instituting open administrative reviews before releasing the money. She could insist on independent audits instead of self-reporting by the agencies to weigh their effectiveness.

But nothing will likely change until voters mete out punishment to politicians who blatantly abuse the system to serve their self-interest ahead of the public interest.

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

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