Better ways of setting government salaries

Several Kaua’i County Council members have indicated that the salary ordinance

they recently killed will rise from the dead in a new form once they are

re-elected. Their zeal to make amends to the Salary Commission and the

administration could easily lead to overlooking a systemic problem that needs

correcting, and add to a muddle that began in 1988 and has continued to build

ever since.

The origin of the muddle is the 1988 charter amendments, and a

reversal of the muddle must begin with corrections to those amendments, notably

by repealing Article 29 and thus abolishing the Salary Commission.

I was

not present when those amendments were adopted, and I do not know what

arguments were offered in their support. One can only wonder today how such a

flawed document won approval.

Consider first the changes instituted by the

1988 charter amendments:

* Transferred power to set council salaries from

council to a Salary Commission.

* Assigned power to recommend

administrative salaries to a Salary Commission.

* Set mayor’s term at four

years and limited mayor to two terms, with the effect of changing the entire

administrative cycle from two to four years.

* Unwittingly created an issue

of mid-term raises. When the entire government ran on a two-year cycle,

salaries presumably were adjusted every two years as necessary.

Eliminated the only objective benchmark previously used in setting

administrative salaries – that is, “No department head shall receive a salary

less than that of the highest paid civil service employee in the county.”

(Sect. 3.11).

* Created the only commission (Salary Commission) defined as

independent and having a two-year term.

Now consider the flaws in Article

29:

* Can a body appointed jointly by mayor and council, not elected,

realistically be defined as independent? Independent of whom and to what

extent? At a minimum, the word seems to forbid council/administration

participation in the commission’s deliberations and decision-making. But the

basic question may be whether an independent Salary Commission is a workable

concept.

* Sect. 29.01, which calls for mayor and council each to appoint

three members to the Salary Commission, conflicts with 23.02B as amended in

1986, which allows joint appointing power only for commissions created by

ordinance.

* The two-year term of the Salary Commission conflicts with

23.02C, which mandates three-year staggered terms for commissions. The two-year

term also appears awkward in that the Salary Commission sets salaries for the

next incoming council (two-year cycle) and recommends salaries for

administrators (four-year cycle).

* The duty of the Salary Commission to

recommend administrative salaries conflicts with 7.05E, which assigns the same

function to the mayor. If the conflict is resolved by saying that the

commission simply channels its recommendations through the mayor, we are then

back to the question of what “independent” means.

* Is it legally

defensible to have a non-elected body (Salary Commission) engaged in a

legislative function (setting salaries for the council)? Even if legally

defensible, is it desirable arrangement?

Here are my suggestions for

corrective action:

1. Amend the charter by (a) repealing Article 29 (thus

eliminating the Salary Commission) and returning the power to set council

salaries to the council; (b) Reinstating the original section 3.06, which

forbids council to enact salary changes for itself during the last 90 days of a

term; (c) Repealing 7.05E, which calls for the mayor to submit a pay plan for

the administration.

2. Appoint an advisory committee to submit periodic

recommendations to council regarding salaries.

3. Adopt a guideline that

(a) sets base salaries for the administration at the beginning of each term,

and (b) takes due account of the four-year term by, for example, allowing

cost-of-living adjustments.

If these or similar corrective actions are

taken, there still remains a question, both short-term and long-term, whether

salary increases should be tied to performance audits or other evaluation

procedures. Any such linkage should be avoided, because the most that could be

so revealed is that an employee is doing the job for which he was

hired.

Horace Stoessel , Kapa’a