Commission reviewing
OHA board members’
pay, benefits

By Pat Omandam
Star-Bulletin

Who is to say trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs should make more than the current $32,000 a year and be eligible for retirement benefits in the state Employees' Retirement System?

That responsibility falls on the 1999 OHA Salary Commission, which during the next six months will review these and other issues relating to pay for the nine-member OHA board.

The commissioners held their first meeting yesterday, and heard from current OHA trustees and staff who said trustees deserve more pay and retirement benefits.

The governor-appointed panel must submit recommendations to the 2000 state Legislature by Feb. 14 for lawmakers to consider them next session.

OHA Chairwoman Rowena Akana said trustees are the only elected officials who do not qualify for state retirement benefits. Although OHA can and has implemented a supplemental retirement program for senior trustees, those benefits are offset by any other retirement income received by the trustees.

Moreover, Akana said, OHA employees are eligible for the Employees' Retirement System although their elected trustees are not.

OHA was created in 1980 and its trustees served without pay for more than a decade. In 1993, the state Legislature passed a law that set the annual salary of trustees at $32,000 for members and $37,000 for the board chairman, in line with the pay of state lawmakers. But rather than using the state general fund to pay salaries, the money comes exclusively from ceded lands revenue.

The law, Act 358, included trustees in state fringe benefit programs except those relating to retirement. And it established an appointed salary commission to review trustee salary every four years beginning in 1996, although none was ever appointed.

This past session, lawmakers addressed the delay in the salary review by moving the start date for the commission from 1996 to 1999.

Akana urged commissioners yesterday to recommend to the Legislature that it no longer have oversight of OHA trustee pay since the Legislature does not tell the OHA board how to spend its trust money. OHA is unique from other state agencies yet it still must seek legislative approval for pay raises, she said.

"If that is the case, there is no need for a commission," she said.

Commissioner Joseph Papalimu of Hawaii said ideally it would be a panel of Hawaiians independent from the state that determines trustees salaries.

"We're here because we're appointed by the governor to do it," he said.

OHA legal counsel Kali Watson said pay raises are needed if OHA is to keep and attract people from a limited pool of Hawaiian leaders.