A bill before the State Senate would cap the amount of bonuses or awards highly paid state employees, including University of Hawaii coaches and athletic administrators, could receive in a single year at $25,000.
The limit would be effective to all contracts written or renewed after July 1, 2013 and apply to those whose base salary is more than $275,000.
In 2012 there were 19 UH employees whose salaries were listed above that threshold.
Among current athletic department employees, football coach Norm Chow ($550,000), men’s basketball coach Gib Arnold ($344,000) and athletic director Ben Jay ($293,000) top the baseline salary and have contracts with a dozen or more bonus provisions.
Arnold, for example, has 20 bonus provisions and could top $25,000 without winning the Big West Conference title. Among his incentives are $6,000 for each regular season or conference tournament victory on national TV and $1,000 for each home autograph session, up to six per year.
UH spokeswoman Lynne Waters said in an email, "UH will be carefully considering all proposed legislation and offering testimony at the appropriate time."
The measure, SB 672, is sponsored by 12 senators, including Brian Taniguchi (D, Moiliili-Manoa), chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee. It is one of several bills that legislators say grew out of the revelations from hearings into the Stevie Wonder fiasco last year.
Another one, SB 967, would require the UH Board of Regents to submit for the legislature’s approval any salary proposals that match or exceed double that of the governor.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s salary is listed at $117,312. In 2012, 33 UH officials were listed as having salaries that exceeded $234,624.
Taniguchi said union-represented employees, including many coaches, would likely be excluded from SB 967, but not the AD position.
Taniguchi said, "I think there was some concern that when Jim Donovan’s new position kind of popped up when there was nothing there (previously), where did they get the money?"
In July, Donovan was reassigned to a newly created position in the Manoa chancellor’s office that was to have paid $210,000 per year after not being retained as athletic director.
"I think there is a general sense that the Board of Regents is responsible for this but, at a certain point, when salaries get awfully high there should be some public input, maybe the Legislature reviewing it. That’s the intent," Taniguchi said.
