Police and fire chiefs
may get 5% pay raise
City Council members wondered yesterday whether the city can afford a 5 percent pay raise for the police and fire chiefs and their deputies as was recommended by the city Salary Commission.
The commission voted to increase the police and fire chiefs' salaries to $110,206 from $104,958.
If approved, the salaries of the chiefs, who received a 5 percent raise last year, would be higher than the salary of the city managing director at $107,100.
Salaries for the second-in-command in both departments would rise to $104,583 from $99,603.
The salaries go into effect unless the Council votes them down by the end of June.
"We were concerned about the morale. We were concerned about potential to lose the leadership from both departments," Salary Commission Chairman David Wilson told Council members.
But with the Council not even sure where to find money to pay for $2.1 million in arbitrated pay raises for rank-and-file firefighters, giving the chiefs a pay raise could be an iffy proposition.
"I think if we give the rank and file, the general sentiment will be probably to give the chiefs their raise just to maintain the differential," Council Chairman Gary Okino said.
Last year, the Council nixed commission recommended raises for the Council, the mayor, the managing director and deputy managing director but allowed raises for department heads, their deputies, city attorneys, the police and fire chiefs and their deputies to go into effect.
This year, the commission only recommended raises for the fire and police chiefs and their deputies.
Both police Chief Lee Donohue and fire Chief Attilio Leonardi said the raises are meant to help to keep the salaries of top administrators in line with raises received by officers and firefighters covered by collective-bargaining agreements.
"We know that the city is strapped financially, but I think when we looked at the issue at hand, we are not doing this for ourselves; we are doing this for the future administrators of the Police and Fire departments," Donohue said.
"So what we wanted to do was to ask for these pay raises so that we could move up and then have that captains and majors and assistant chiefs come up behind us."
Donohue said that five years ago he had assistant chiefs making more money than a higher-ranking deputy chief, so there was little salary incentive to become a deputy chief. Leonardi said the same situation occurred with his battalion chiefs and higher-ranking assistant chiefs.
"The reason we are here is because in the last three or four years, the Salary Commission has worked hard to make separation between the classes," Leonardi said.
Councilwoman Barbara Marshall said she is introducing a resolution that would vote down the Salary Commission recommendation. She said she has grave concerns about giving a salary hike for upper management while rank-and-file employees have to go to arbitration to get raises.
"We don't even know how we're going to fund those meager raises, and therefore I'm suggesting that this is not an appropriate time for us to give a second 5 percent raise within a space of a year to the leaders of these departments," Marshall said.
A joint committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday to decide on both sets of raises.
City & County of Honolulu
