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The Ombudsman told me - and should also have told the HDOH - that non-certified abbreviated certificates are disloseable to anyone who asks for them. That is because HRS 338-18(a) only forbids what isn’t already authorized by the laws or rules.

The rest of this post will address the question of whether Obama’s records are being treated differently, and what is being done to try to hide whether (that) his records are being treated differently.

Verifications are also lawful to be disclosed to people who meet the qualifications, but Janice Okubo told me that they don’t issue verifications.

I can’t disclose specific details without the permission of the person who has the experience, but I can say that according to a worker at the HDOH, the HDOH refers qualified verification requests to the AG to figure out how to handle a dilemma they have: the feds have told the HDOH they can’t release anything of Obama’s and if they release a verification for somebody else as prescribed by law it will prove that they are treating Obama’s records differently. So the only way to hide that they are treating Obama’s records differently is to refuse to make disclosures for ANYBODY. How to justify that when it is clearly in violation of the law is the dilemma the AG is trying to solve.

The last I had heard, they were telling my colleague that their office is so backlogged that they can’t get to her request. How long do you think that can go on? (And I’ve got postmarked proof that their office was NOT too “backlogged” to fill a request of mine within the 10-day deadline required by the OIP, in the same time period that her request was made).

Notice that’s what they did with long-form birth certificates also. They SAID to us haoles that they don’t issue long-form BC’s any more. But there is video footage of them doing just that in their office. Why did they tell the whole world something that wasn’t true? Because they had to provide a (false) excuse for why Obama wouldn’t release his long-form. They can’t say that they don’t print OBAMA’S long-form any more, which is what they really mean - because it would prove they are treating Obama’s records differently, so they lied to the whole world by saying they can’t disclose ANY long-forms.

Furthermore, I spoke to a worker at the vital records office myself. When we couldn’t find any record of my request in the system even though I had received e-mailed responses from hdohinfo, the worker suddenly asked me if the request was about Obama. I asked if it would make any difference. She said that all requests about Obama are supposed to go through Okubo’s office instead of to the fulfillment department to be filled according to the laws and rules. Okubo is the watchdog for Obama’s records. She’s “Baghdad Bob”.

And BTW, Okubo considers all index data requests to be “about Obama” - according to her own words in a UIPA response to the AP’s Mark Niesse - a copy of which I got through my own UIPA request. And index data requests, incidentally, are required to be snail-mailed, which means that if you don’t sent it with delivery confirmation you will never hear back from them (speaking from my experience and that of others; and even with delivery confirmation the HDOH has denied that they’ve gotten requests), and you are subject to the delays of the postal system. So what Okubo considers to be requests about Obama ARE treated blatantly differently.

Furthermore, in a single day a colleague sent in 2 separate index data requests - one for someone having the last name of Dunham and the other being a control group with no visible connection to Obama. She received a response for the non-Dunham name a month earlier than for the Dunham request, as she was told the Dunham one had experienced a “delay”.

What’s going on at the HDOH is NOT just an administrative SNAFU. The rule-breaking and law-breaking is too pervasive and targeted, and the lying too blatant for it to be just a SNAFU.

Butter, we're going to have to disagree on this without more evidence. You feel that noncertified copies are definitely permitted. I question that in light of the statute, and even looking at the 1976 amended HDOH rules, I see they have internal contradictions. Section 2.1 A says

Vital records authorized under chapter 338 Hawaiian Revised Statutes are not available for or open to public inspection. Access to the records, including copies or information from them is not permitted except as provided by law or regulations the Department of Health may promulgate.

Section 2.3 says:

The applications must contain... [name, address, etc.] and must establish their right as provided herein to the information shown on the certificate.

You state they don't release verifications for anyone because "the feds have told the HDOH they can’t release anything of Obama’s and if they release a verification for somebody else as prescribed by law it will prove that they are treating Obama’s records differently. " I tend not to rely on "a person in the office told me" type stuff, having been around bureaucratic rumor mills (hospitals, in my case) for too long. A simple test should be if they released verifications for anyone prior to 2008 but after the 1977 statute. Is there evidence for that? Is there evidence of a noncertified copy of a COLB being provided to a nonqualified applicant in that time frame?

I don't put delays in the same category, as they have said they have a much higher volume of requests for Obama data than for anyone else's.

They SAID to us haoles that they don’t issue long-form BC’s any more. But there is video footage of them doing just that in their office. This might be evidence I'd believe. So

When did this occur? Is there clear dating of the video that can be relied on to prove it occurred after HDOH says they stopped issuing them?
Are they issued only in connection with applicants for the Hawaiian Homelands program, which is the only program where HDOH says a long form is more helpful than a COLB?
Are they only issued to those who apply in person vs. mail in applications?
Is there some other situation where a long form is issued that most people don't qualify for?

Without better evidence, this looks like someone choosing the "conspiracy" interpretation rather then the "bureaucratic SNAFU" interpretation, which is far more common. If you have actual evidence, by all means please present it.