HONOLULU — Nine Honolulu City Council resolutions urging voter-approved charter amendments to overhaul how the city pays its employees were reduced to one this week.
The Council’s Committee on Executive Management on Wednesday voted to recommend Resolution 105 advance to potentially allow voters in the 2024 general election to address city salaries and possibly change or limit the Salary Commission’s powers to grant salaries.
Introduced by Council Chair Tommy Waters, Resolution 105 would affect the compensation of all elected officials, including the mayor, Council members, the prosecuting attorney, and appointed city officials such as the managing director, deputy managing director, department heads, deputy heads, and the Royal Hawaiian Band director.
It would also affect the city’s “schedule for salaries” of deputies working for the city Department of Corporation Counsel, and Department of the Prosecuting Attorney, the resolution states.
Namely, Resolution 105 will consider the following question: “Shall the Revised City Charter provisions relating to the Salary Commission and the process for setting salaries and salary schedules for all elected and certain appointed city officials be amended as follows:
“Setting adjustments to Council members’ salaries by formula, by taking an average of the most recent annual salary increases of collectively bargained city employees, and prohibiting the Council from voting on its own raises; provided that in no event may Council members’ salaries be increased by more than 5 percent per year.”
Before the vote, Waters said the “Council members’ salaries by formula” provision means that “if the city employees don’t get a raise, we don’t get a raise — simple as that.”
“And I think people would appreciate that,” he added. “And it’s more predictable I think. … I’m just trying to be fair with what every other city employee makes.”
In April the Council first floated resolutions to alter the Salary Commission.
Specifically, the legislation follows the city Salary Commission’s March 19 recommendation, with a formal adoption April 23, to grant a 3 percent or greater pay boost for the mayor, managing director, the Council and other elected and appointed, high-level city officials.
The proposed pay hikes by the Salary Commission — variously appointed by the mayor and Council — come less than a year after the Council received a controversial 64 percent salary increase and the Honolulu mayor’s pay jumped nearly 12.6 percent. In 2023, eight members of the Council were awarded a $44,400 pay bump to $113,304, up from $68,904. Three rejected the pay raises.
However earlier this year, the full Council and Mayor Rick Blangiardi declared they will reject any respective pay hikes. Compensation for all city workers will be included in the city’s proposed $3.63 billion operating budget, which is expected to be adopted by June.
Although the panel recommended Resolution 105 for review, Council member Calvin Say questioned the process to use charter amendments to change the city Salary Commission.
“I don’t believe the system is broken, it’s just that our predecessors did not want to approve their pay raises,” Say told the panel. “So now we’re going to go through this exercise, which is fine. We’re questioning the constitution of the commission; I thought it was fine.”
He added “don’t get me wrong, we have to do something in the optics of what the public wants. … But don’t tie the hands of our future Council members.”
Likewise, Waters noted “the public was very concerned and upset perhaps about the one-time salary adjustment, and I think that’s why we’re acting on this now.”
But Waters would defer a separate option, first submitted by Council member Augie Tulba, to use a lottery system to pick future Salary Commission members rather than the current Council and mayoral appointments.
Instead, he wanted the city’s Charter Commission — which convenes every 10 years to revise the city’s constitution — to review that idea when that panel next forms in 2025.
Oahu resident Natalie Iwasa questioned the Council salaries’ plan.
“In my May 2 testimony, I had asked for discussion to include clarification from the Honolulu Ethics Commission regarding conflicts of interest between Council members and votes on their salaries,” she said in written testimony for Wednesday’s meeting. “Chair Waters has been quoted as stating that it is a conflict of interest to vote on your own salaries, yet only one potential conflict of interest disclosure statement has been filed with respect to Bill 11 for this year’s legislative budget, which includes council members’ salaries.”
“It can’t be both ways — either there is a conflict, and disclosures should be filed, or there is no conflict,” she said. “The inconsistent treatment of this issue should be resolved prior to final vote on the proposed charter amendment related to the Honolulu Salary Commission.”
The full Council is expected to deliberate Resolution 105 at its June 5 meeting. The Council’s eight other salary-related resolutions were postponed indefinitely.
