The Honolulu City Council is considering several different proposals to change the rules for determining the salaries of public officials, but one question underlies them all — who should, and should not, have a say?

The proposals were spurred by controversy last year over a 64% raise for Honolulu City Council, from $69,000 to about $113,000. That hefty pay hike was recommended by the Honolulu Salary Commission, a six-member panel of volunteers.

The controversy has led council members to propose seven different measures to change the system, all of which will be heard for the first time during Wednesday’s monthly council meeting, with the salary commission itself weighing in with an eighth.

The proposals grapple with the critical question of whether council members should be able to reject their own pay raises. The big hike last year was caused, in large part, by the council vetoing its own pay raises for years because of the political optics, leading salaries to stagnate.

“That is the big issue,” said Kellen Zale, a law professor at the University of Houston. In a 2018 Stanford Law Review article, she surveyed how different U.S. municipalities handle council member compensation.

The low pay from council members rejecting their own raises, in turn, can lead them to seek other sources of income, a reality that has also split the council, with some arguing that it should be formally considered a full-time job.

Zale said the current structure makes it difficult to break away from this high-charged conversation.

“Some of the best practices were independent commissions where it was a mandatory recommendation. Like, the council did not have the option to reject the recommended pay raise — to kind of get away from that political posturing,” she said.

These independent commissions could be appointed by elected officials, as they are in Honolulu, or through a citizen lottery. Zale also recommends that pay raises don’t take effect until after the next election cycle, which is how Hawaii’s state government operates. That way, officials are not voting on their own raises.

City Council Chairman Tommy Waters, the commission itself, and council members Matt Weyer and Val Okimoto propose that the commission’s pay recommendation automatically take effect without the possibility of the council rejecting them. Waters’ proposal would still allow council members to reject raises for other positions like the mayor and department heads.

The change would make Honolulu like other counties in Hawaii, which already don’t give council members the option to vote down pay raises. 

Any change to the salary commission’s structure would have to be approved by voters in the November general election in the form of amendments to the Honolulu City Charter.  

Currently, the system mandates that the volunteer Honolulu Salary Commission meet annually to set new pay rates for top city officials such as council members, the mayor and department heads. 

Commissioners then submit their recommendations to the council, which can reject some or all of them by a three-quarters vote. Otherwise, raises automatically take effect after 60 days. 

Half of the proposals the council is considering would get rid of council members’ option to vote. 

Waters said last year that he believes the current incentive structure is flawed: Politically, it looks better for council members to reject raises, and those rejections can add up over many years. 

If council members need to work other jobs to make ends meet, it detracts from their focus on improving the city, Waters said. 

Outside Employment

Council members Andria Tupola and Augie Tulba take the opposite tack. Rather than raises being automatic, with no public input, they believe that the controversy last year stemmed from not enough public input.

They jointly submitted two proposals, one of which requires the council to hold a hearing on the proposed pay raises and another of which lowers the burden of rejection from a three-fourths vote to a simple majority.

They had hoped to reject the raises last year, but couldn’t because Waters refused to schedule a vote. Tupola, Tulba and council member Radiant Cordero refused to take the raises.

This year, the commission is proposing a council member raise from about $113,000 to about $118,000, but all council members have said they are prepared to reject the raises for themselves, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Camron Hurt, who leads the good government advocacy group Common Cause Hawaii, said that last year’s raises were justified. But he believes that constituents should still be involved in the decision-making process.

“To me, the raise isn’t a hard sell — $68,000 we know is not anything, especially if you’re the sole provider for your family and you have multiple kids,” he said. 

But many people see council members as working a part-time job, he said. While the city charter doesn’t explicitly say whether that's the case, council members are allowed to have outside employment, and some do. 

Waters, Tupola, Tulba and council member Calvin Say report outside employment on their financial disclosure forms.

But some council members are adamant that the position already is a full-time job based on the number of hours they work. 

Last year, to make that more explicit, Waters and council member Esther Kiaaina introduced a bill and a charter amendment to prohibit outside jobs for council members. The bill went nowhere but the charter amendment passed an initial vote, with only Tupola and Tulba voting against it. Weyer voted yes with reservations. Council members would need to vote for the charter amendment two more times to get it on the ballot.

Members of the salary commission are also considering how to reform the system. During its March meeting, commission chair Malia Espinda proposed that the commission be given the power to approve more frequent gradual increases to avoid the need for sporadic big hikes.

It's important to settle the question of whether the job is full-time or part-time, commissioner Rebecca Soon said. She wants to discuss that at the commission's April meeting.

She said she hopes to "get at the issue of outside employment without completely prohibiting it."

A resolution by Tulba proposes a pay raise cap of 10%. Tupola is proposing a cap of 5%.

It’s a recognition that some constituents might have supported last year’s raise at a more modest 10%, as some testifiers wrote, but were outraged at the 64% raise. 

Even Weyer, who supported last year’s raise and believes council members shouldn’t have to vote on their own salaries, proposed a cap of 3.5%.