A resolution calling for a voter-approved charter amendment to cap the annual pay of the Honolulu City Council has advanced.
The Council voted unanimously Wednesday to adopt Resolution 105, which is also designed to prevent the city’s top legislative body from approving its own future salary increases as well.
As adopted, the resolution further seeks to limit
the powers of the Honolulu Salary Commission — the appointed, volunteer body that annually establishes salaries for all elected officials, including the mayor, Council and prosecuting attorney, among other city workers.
As approved, the following question would be placed on the 2024 general election ballot:
“Shall the Revised City Charter provisions relating to the salaries for Council members be amended to cap any annual increase at no more than five percent, require that any changes be tied to the average annual salary changes of city
employees in the city’s collective bargaining units, and remove the Council’s authority to vote on its own raises?”
Introduced by Council Chair Tommy Waters, the resolution states, “For the purposes of setting the salaries of Council members, preservation of a sensible relationship between those salaries and the salaries of other city employees requires that any salary changes for Council members be substantially equivalent to the average of the most recent annual salary changes of employees in the city’s various collective bargaining units.”
The resolution also states it will determine “salary changes that result from
the employees’ time in service, lump-sum payments, and any other relevant factors; provided that the
Commission may not
increase the salary for Council members by more than
5 percent from one fiscal year to the next.”
In April the Council first floated resolutions to alter how the city Salary Commission — variously appointed by the mayor and Council — determines its annual city salary schedules, particularly for Council members.
Specifically, the legislation follows the Salary
Commission’s March 19 recommendation, with a formal adoption April 23, to grant a 3% or greater pay boost for the Council and other elected and appointed, high-level city officials.
The proposed pay hikes by the Salary Commission came less than a year after the Council received a controversial 64% salary increase and the Honolulu mayor’s pay jumped nearly 12.6%. In 2023, eight members of the Council were awarded a $44,400 pay bump to $113,304, up from $68,904.
Three rejected their pay raises.
However, earlier this year the full Council and Mayor Rick Blangiardi declared they will reject any respective 3% pay hikes for fiscal year 2025. Compensation
for all city workers was included in the city’s newly adopted $3.63 billion executive operating budget, which the mayor is expected to sign later this month.
But before Wednesday’s vote, Resolution 105 drew mixed reactions from the public and Council.
“I know you folks have worked a lot on this issue, but I oppose the current version,” Oahu resident Natalie Iwasa told the panel. “And the main reason is that you removed yourselves from voting on your own raises. The reason I am concerned about that is it removes flexibility from the budgeting process.”
Iwasa said she had
requested the Council “have a discussion” with the city Ethics Commission “in public to clarify whether it was truly a conflict of interest for you folks to vote on your raises.”
“So we have this kind of unclear situation, and that’s not good public policy,” she added. “So I oppose this and ask you to vote ‘no,’ and
perhaps ask the Charter Commission — I think they convene next year — to take up the issue.”
Still, Council member
Calvin Say said Resolution 105 will give the public an opportunity for an “up or down” vote to potentially change the City Charter.
Alluding to the Council’s 64% salary increase, Say — among six on the panel who accepted the pay hike — noted that “our predecessors for the past 18 years did not want to address their pay raise.”
“So it put the onus on the elected officials at that point in time,” Say said, adding that the new charter amendment “is a start in seeing how the general public will react to this particular (resolution).”
But Oahu resident Choon James — a mayoral candidate for the 2024 election — said she’d prefer to see Honolulu’s process to set new city salaries kept “the way it is.”
“The Salary Commission is an appointed group, and because it’s not elected, it ought to be the responsibility and accountability of the elected City Council to make that decision,” she said. “And I don’t expect that there will be a lot of 64% increases in the near future, but to me the big differences are you all are elected, and the Salary Commission people are not.”
In response, Waters said, “As you know, this is a charter amendment, and the people will be allowed to decide this (issue) on the
ballot.”
