by Andrew Walden
The Abercrombie administration has quietly posted seven new Executive Orders online. Dated October, November, and December, 2013, five of the Executive Orders deal with routine transfers of authority over parcels of land. The other two grant (EO 13-10 and EO 13-11) pay and benefit increases to executive branch political appointees matching those awarded to the HGEA Bargaining Units 10 and 13. Included in the orders are several pages of the HGEA contract delineating salary and benefit packages. These have not made available to the public elsewhere:
The BU10 EO includes salary hike information without the underlying salary schedules, but five pages of BU13 salary schedules reveal a base salary scale which will top out at $148,704 in 2017 for ES03 employees.
The BU13 contract includes a $1 per hour differential for Hawaii State Hospital employees, “because of unusual or unique working conditions in having contact with patients who are ordered by the courts….” The same differential applies to employees assigned to correctional facilities. For HHSC employees, the differential applies only during hours when working with court-ordered patients.
Union-connected Royal State Insurance hauls in anywhere from $53.08 to $147.52 per employee, per month.
With the contracts approved during the Special Session while all eyes were on gay marriage, the two bargaining units reaped $684M in wage and benefit increases. Star-Advertiser columnist Richard Borreca pointed out November 15, 2013:
…two bills authorized the funding of pay raises for two groups of public workers: nearly 3,000 blue-collar institutional, health and prison workers, and the 7,700 state and county white-collar professional and scientific workers.
The tab for both groups, for the remaining years of their state contracts?
An extra $30 million this fiscal year, then, because of compounding, an extra $77 million for fiscal year 2015, an extra $114.7 million for fiscal year 2016 and then an extra $154 million each for fiscal years 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to figures put together by the House Finance Committee.
In total, about an extra $684.2 million in pay raises, for just two of the 14 bargaining groups of state and county workers.
And that's just the pay raises, not the extra costs for benefits and pensions, nor the existing salary or overtime….
Legislators knew the budget would increase when the two union contracts were signed, but the approval of an extra $684.2 million deserves note, if not debate.
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For comparison purposes, here is Governor Lingle’s 2007 Executive Order covering the same bargaining units and more >>> LINK
And here is the Salary Commission Report to the Legislature from March 18, 2013.
LINK: HB1 for BU10
LINK: HB2 for BU13
Abercrombie Executive Orders related to land transfers:
- Executive Order No. 4439, Oct. 12, 2013
- Executive Order No. 4440, Oct. 12, 2013
- Executive Order No. 4441, Nov. 22, 2013
- Executive Order No. 4442, Nov. 22, 2013
- Executive Order No. 4443, Nov. 22, 2013