Lingle rescinds Gov. Linda Lingle rescinded an executive order yesterday that former Gov. Ben Cayetano signed less than three weeks before he left office.
Cayetano’s executive
order on hiring
It would have allowed appointees
Business key to Lingle appointees
to bypass civil service
recruiting procedures
Lingle taking knife to state's fat
By Crystal Kua
ckua@starbulletin.comThe order allowed political appointees to bypass the civil service recruitment process, making it easier for them to get permanent state jobs.
"This particular decision has really rankled the working people in the state government because they are not being given a fair chance," Lingle said of the Cayetano order.
"Some people have been given a fairer chance than others."
The governor's action was welcome news to public employee unions who fielded concerns from civil servants.
"We appreciate the fact that the governor took the step to rescind that executive order. It caused a lot of upset and controversy within the ranks of civil servants," said Randy Perreira, deputy executive director of the Hawaii Government Employees Association.
The order, signed on Nov. 13, allowed appointees to apply for civil service jobs at the same time as civil service employees instead of waiting for the jobs to be publicly announced.
Lingle and Perreira said it is not known how many employees were hired through this process.
The order also allows these employees to keep their old pay when they move into the civil service position, even if that salary is higher than the civil service position's pay.
Perreira said that civil service workers were not happy about that, either.
"There's a lot of concern about how some of these employees who had taken jobs in government through appointment by the governor, patronage in effect, would now be able to retain their pay as they took civil service jobs without going through the civil process and end up working side by side with civil servants, making far more money than their civil service counterparts," Perreira said.
In a memo to all department heads yesterday, Lingle's chief of staff, Bob Awana, wrote that effective immediately, no civil service positions are to be filled using the order. "Until further notice, please continue prior practices in filling approved vacancies," the memo said.
Civil service was set up "so that people are treated fairly in employment and everybody has an equal opportunity," Lingle said.
"Not only have we rescinded it, but we are calling for the head of the (human resources) department ... to do an investigation of anybody in the past six months who has been put into one of these positions via this approach," Lingle said. "We're going to be reviewing them and having departments answer for why someone was allowed into a position like this."
State of Hawaii
