Key members of the City Council are taking steps to tighten the rules for filling vacant job positions so that city agencies cannot spend the money on other purposes.
Too much is being diverted to pay for such things as mileage expenses and cashing out unused vacation pay for retiring employees, says Councilman Ikaika Anderson. The practice, while allowed, goes against the intended purpose of the appropriations, he said.
"I would say that prior administrations have treated funding from vacant positions as though the fund was a slush fund," Anderson said.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell opposes the move, arguing that department heads need the flexibility to be able to manage their budgets.
It’s among the bigger disagreements unfolding between Caldwell and the Council, along with the mayor’s failed plan to increase the fuel tax to help pay for road improvements, a month into deliberations over the city’s $2.09 billion operating budget for fiscal 2014.
The Council is taking the second of three votes on the budget at its meeting Wednesday at Kapolei Hale.
Anderson and Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi are leading the fight to curb vacant funded positions, although Council Chairman Ernie Martin has also suggested that some of the money for vacant positions could be used for other purposes such as road improvements, for which Caldwell had sought the fuel tax increase.
The Council’s plan, proposed by Anderson and endorsed by Kobayashi’s Budget Committee last week, transfers nearly all city vacancies into one provisional account within the office of Managing Director Ember Shinn. The plan also would cut in half the amount set aside in the 2014 budget for filling vacant positions to about $27 million. No agency is being spared from the cuts, not even when money was set aside for patrol officers or refuse workers.
"They were misusing the money this past year," Kobayashi said. "We just need a better handle on how the money is being spent. We just want more transparency."
A proviso in the proposal tightens up how the money can be spent, she said.
As for slashing the account in half, Anderson noted that typically city agencies are able to fill only one-fourth of their funded vacancies in any given year.
"Historically, prior administrations at best have been able to fill 25 percent of their vacant positions, and 25 percent is a very generous estimate," Anderson said. "So what we’re saying is we’re going to give you the money necessary to fill more than double the vacant positions that you historically have filled."
But Caldwell told the Star-Advertiser on Friday that the plan to consolidate money for vacant funded positions into one account "too simplistic" and that it places too much restriction over the administration.
"Any large government operation like ours, with more than 10,000 employees, will always have people coming and going," Caldwell said. "There are people retiring, people are being promoted from one position into another, people who are leaving for other jobs, and sometimes people are terminated."
The existing system "gives the administrative branch the operational flexibility it needs to do the things that people are demanding be done, whether it be the road repaving, whether it be the sewer infrastructure repairs we’re doing under consent decree (or) park improvements," Caldwell said. "These are all improvements being done by employees of the City and County of Honolulu."
The proposal "gives less flexibility to the executive branch to hire people particularly in areas of greatest need," he said. "It slows down the decision-making process; it slows down the ability for us to achieve the goals that we’ve set."
As an example, he said, slashing vacant positions would make it more difficult for him to carry out his promise to ramp up road repairs around Oahu.
It’s unrealistic for 100 percent of the positions to be filled, he said.
Caldwell said the argument that consolidating the money would make operations more transparent is a false one.
"Right now you can find out how many vacant and funded positions there are that are unfilled," he said. He noted that the Council is sent regular reports on which vacancies are filled and which remain.
If the money is used for other purposes, "the money can be traced so you can show how it’s been used," Caldwell said.
Anderson disagreed. While Council members do receive regular reports, "what you won’t find on those reports, and what is extremely difficult to find, is how much money is being spent on other purposes besides filling vacancies."
Consolidating the funds, rather than exerting too much control over the administration, makes it easier for the managing director and the administration to look at funding vacancies in a more global fashion and fill openings more efficiently, he said.
"I think that’s a good thing."
