Hawaii's Revised Statute HRS338 restricts making public birth certificate and other birth vital records only to those who have a "direct and tangible interest," namely the person applying for the certified birth certificate copy, a member of the immediate family, or others with a legal interest such as an adoptive parent or a legal guardian.

The language of HB1116 attempted to skirt these restrictions by modifying Hawaii law such that for a fee of $100, the Hawaii Department of Health will release "a copy of a birth record" for those HB1116 defines as "persons of prominence," such as Barack Obama or any other Hawaiian running for president.

The tip-off that the proposed legislation intended to withhold from public disclosure President Obama's long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate, if such a document exists, came in an interview Democratic Rep. John Mizuno, one of the Democratic co- sponsors of the measure gave to Gina Mangieri reporting for KHON2 in Hawaii.

"If the people are so concerned about Barack Obama and if he was actually born in Hawaii, born in the United States, let them pay a fee of 100 bucks," Mizuno told KHON2. "We can certainly use the money, and we don't need to hear their complaining anymore."

Mangieri in reporting Mizuno's comments noted Hawaiian lawmakers sponsoring the bill acknowledge they would need to clear the confidentiality hurdles in state law that prohibit the Department of Health from disclosing any information about a Hawaii vital record unless the requestor has a direct and tangible interest in the record.

"We're hoping to work with our legal department, the attorney general's office, for an opinion to see if we can craft something which will justify that it is true, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, and will have the state seal to certify that," Mizuno told KHON2. "Something very generic but won't violate any federal or state law."

Now, Democrats in the state legislature are claiming the demand to see Obama's birth certificate was not as great as they originally thought, certainly not a demand sufficient to slow up or otherwise interfere with the orderly operation of the Hawaii Department of Health.

Rep. Rida Cabanilla, the Democrat who first introduced the bill, said she decided to drop the issue after she learned out that requests to the Hawaii Department of Health to see Obama's birth documents have declined to just a few a week.

"The demand is dying down," Cabanilla told the Associated Press. "If they still get a lot of requests, I could have pushed it more."

The Hawaii legislature stepped into the breach to offer to produce and sell for $100 official Obama birth records after Gov. Abercrombie announced publicly he was abandoning his effort to find and make public Obama’s birth records in Hawaii.

WND has previously reported that the Honolulu Star Advertiser printed an interview with Abercrombie that suggested a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.

Toward the end of the interview with the Honolulu Star Advertiser, the newspaper asked Abercrombie the following: "Q: You stirred up quite a controversy with your comments regarding birthers and your plan to release more information regarding President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. How is that coming?"

In responding, Abercrombie acknowledged that the birth certificate issue will have "political implications" for the presidential election in 2012 "that we simply cannot have."

In suggesting he was still intent on producing more birth records on Obama from the Hawaii Department of Health vital records vault, Abercrombie told the newspaper there was a recording of the Obama birth in the state archives that Abercrombie wants to make public.

Interestingly, Abercrombie did not report to the newspaper that he or the Hawaii Department of Health had found Obama's long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate; all Abercrombie suggested his investigations had found to date was an unspecified listing or notation of Obama's birth that someone had made in the state archives.

"It was actually written I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down …" Abercrombie said.

The controversy intensified when radio personality Mike Evans, a long-time Hawaii resident and a personal friend of Abercrombie for decades, gave a series of radio interviews on Jan. 20, in which he explained that Abercrombie gave up his search for Obama nativity records because the governor was unable to find in Hawaii's vital records Obama's long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate.

"Although Abercrombie is an Obama lover, he's the first to say he's concerned this is really going to be an issue during the re-election," Evans said on the 92 KQRS Morning Show in Minneapolis.

On air, Evans recounted a discussion he had with Abercrombie in which the governor made clear he had to abandon his search for Obama's birth records because the records Abercrombie expected to find in the Hawaii Department of Health vault were not there..

"Abercrombie was probably more shocked than anybody," Evans said, explaining that Abercrombie ended his search after he was unable to find any Hawaii official nativity documents for Obama that named a Hawaiian hospital where Obama was born or identified a Hawaiian physician who attended Obama's birth.

"Neil promised me that when he became governor, he was going to cut through all the red tape, he was going to get Obama's birth certificate once and for all and end this stupid controversy that he was not born in the United States," Evans said.

"Yesterday, talking to Neil's office, Neil says that he's searched everywhere using his powers as governor at the Kapi'olani Women's and Childrens' Hospital and Queens Hospital, the only places where kids were born in Hawaii back when Barack was born," Evans continued, "and there is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii – absolutely no proof at all that he was born in Hawaii."

Evans subsequently retracted his claim, saying that he misspoke when he suggested he had actually spoken to the governor about Abercrombie's inability to find Obama's long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate.

So far, the only birth document available on Obama is a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth that first appeared on the Internet during the 2008 presidential campaign when posted by two supposedly independent websites that turned out to display a strong partisan bias for Obama – Snopes.com that released the COLB in June 2008 and FactCheck.org that published photographs of the document in August 2008.

WND has previously reported the Hawaii Department of Health has refused to authenticate the COLB document initially shown on the Internet by Snopes.com and FactCheck.org.

WND also has reported that in 1961, Obama's grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, could have made an in-person report of a Hawaii birth even if the infant Barack Obama, Jr. had been foreign-born.

Similarly, the newspaper announcements of baby Obama's birth do not prove he was born in Hawaii since the newspaper announcements could have been triggered by the grandparents appearing in-person to register baby Obama as a Hawaiian birth, even if the baby was born elsewhere.

Moreover, WND has documented that the address reported in the birth announcements published in the Hawaii newspapers at the time, 6085 Kalanianaole Highway, was the address where the grandparents lived.

WND has also reported that Barack Obama Sr. maintained his own separate apartment in Honolulu at an 11th Avenue address, even after he was supposedly married to Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's mother, and that Ann Dunham left Hawaii within three weeks of the baby's birth toattend the University of Washington in Seattle.

Dunham did not return to Hawaii until after Barack Obama Sr. left Hawaii in June 1962, to attend graduate school at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Conceivably, the yet undisclosed birth record in the state archives that Abercrombie has discovered may have come from the grandparents registering baby Obama' birth, an event that would have triggered both the newspaper birth announcements and availability of a Certification of Live Birth, even if no long-form,

WND also has reported that Tim Adams, a former senior elections clerk for the city and county of Honolulu in 2008, has stated in an affidavit that from his work experience as an elections clerk he learned that there is no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate on file with the Hawaii Department of Health and that neither Queens Medical Center or Kapi'olani Medical Center in Hawaii have any record that baby Obama was born in their hospital.