To the public, the biggest problem with the City Council’s 64% pay increase was the shameless greed displayed by members in taking care of themselves while hardships forced constituents to leave the islands.

To some Council members, apparently, the biggest problem was the grief they had to take for their piggishness.

Council member Val Okimoto, outspoken in defending the unprecedented magnitude of the raises from $68,904 to $113,304, is proposing a City Charter amendment to make future raises politically easier.

She wants to make pay for Council members and city administrators entirely up to the city Salary Commission, with no option for the Council to reject raises with a supermajority vote as they now can.

This way, Council members could shrug and say, “There’s nothing we can do,” as salary commissioners they and the mayor hand-pick lard them with loot.

In the recent tumult, members would have been spared the spectacle of Chair Tommy Waters ignoring public pleas for hearings and a vote, while his money-grubbing majority refused to sign a resolution by members Augie Tulba and Andria Tupola to force Waters to call a vote.

After the Council’s stonewalling, the raises automatically took effect July 1. Tulba, Tupola and Council member Radiant Cordero declined the increases.

Jack James, a political consultant to Tulba in his 2020 campaign, has launched a long-shot recall campaign called “Honolulu 7 Recall” against all members except Tulba and Tupola.

For some Council members the raises could result in a significant boost to their pensions as well as their immediate pocketbooks.

Waters and Vice Chair Esther Kia‘aina publicly pressed one of their Salary Commission nominees for big raises, arguing that the Council, which has traditionally been considered part time, actually works full time — notwithstanding that a majority reported income from outside jobs in 2022.

They later reneged on a pledge to enforce the full-time designation by passing a bill banning Council members from having outside employment, the same as the mayor.

Enacting huge pay raises without the ban on second or third jobs left constituents with the worst of both worlds: Council members paid at a full-time rate while still having few limits on potentially conflicting outside employment.

Okimoto said her original intent was to seek Council passage of her proposed Charter amendment in time to put it before voters in the 2024 election.

But Waters persuaded her to save it for 2024’s Charter Commission and the 2026 ballot, when they hope memories of this year’s avarice will have faded.

Okimoto, first elected in November, has taken flak along with fellow first-termers Matt Weyer and Tyler Dos Santos-Tam for running in full knowledge of what the job paid and then crying for so much more money so few months later.

Who knows what raises salary commissioners would have approved if Okimoto’s proposal has been in effect and they didn’t have to worry about the Council facing pressure to turn down the money?

Commissioners considered Council salaries as high as $185,017 — $11,000 more than U.S. senators make — before public outcry forced them down to the more moderately outrageous $113,304.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.