City juggles accounts
to fund cops, firefighters
By Crystal Kua The city administration has found money to restore positions that were cut from next year's budgets for the police and fire departments, the city's budget director said.
ckua@starbulletin.com
Ivan Lui-Kwan said that $1.5 million for police and $800,000 for firefighters will be taken from an account for accrued vacation pay and salary adjustments.
Lui-Kwan said he believes the remaining $1.7 million will be enough of a cushion in case city retirees need to be paid for accrued vacation or if salary adjustments need to be made.
Also, $794,500 for police will be available after paying for police equipment through the construction budget instead of the operating budget, he said.
"The positions are to be filled out of those accounts," the budget director said.
Lui-Kwan said the money will restore 41 vacant police officer positions and eight civilian positions to the police department budget for the next fiscal year.
The civilians who recently filled the eight positions were slated to be laid off if funding for the positions was not restored.
The fire department would get 26.5 firefighter positions restored to its budget, he said.
During a Council Budget Committee meeting last month, the police and fire chiefs asked that the positions be restored.
Council members weren't happy when they heard that uniformed positions were being cut because they said the administration had told them those jobs wouldn't be lost.
Lui-Kwan said he never promised that no uniform positions would be cut.
Council members questioned the administration's commitment to public safety and sought to instead make cuts to other parts of the proposed $1.1 billion budget.
But in an April 16 letter signed by Police Chief Lee Donohue, Fire Chief Attilio Leonardi and Lui-Kwan, they outlined for Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi the plan to recover the positions.
City & County of Honolulu
