[ OUR OPINION ]
Enforce law limiting
state, county wage hikesHEFTY wage increases for police officers, sketchy assumptions about how much bus drivers make and rosy reports about Hawaii's economy have leaders of public employee unions salivating. State and county employees who have endured wage freezes over the state's decade-long economic slump are due pay increases, but contract arbiters should stick to limitations that won't require tax increases -- limits they are required by law to honor.
THE ISSUE
The union of white-collar public employees will begin negotiating this month with state and county representatives for a new labor contract.If wage increases in public employee union contracts awarded by arbitrators require an increase in state taxes, the Legislature has an obligation to reject those arbitrated awards. If union-controlled legislators refuse to do so, Governor Lingle should exercise her veto power.
Honolulu police officers won pay increases last week that will boost their salaries by 17 percent over the next four years to nearly $50,000 for a 10-year veteran. The arbitration award in the police union contract came after the public became aware during TheBus strike that bus drivers with five years experience make $44,033, more than police officers with similar tenure, although the comparison did not include other benefits.
The state Council on Revenues meanwhile has predicted that tax collections will grow by 6.2 percent during the current fiscal year. The prognosis, used by the state to set its spending amounts, prompted the governor to release $450 million that she had withheld from the state's $7.9 billion two-year budget. She said her administration will continue to practice "fiscal discipline," noting that the council's figures "are still just projections, not money in the bank."
The Hawaii Government Employees Association, whose contracts with the state expire next June, gained passage of a bill in this year's Legislature restoring binding arbitration for most nonessential state and county workers. Unions have been able to convince arbitrators to grant them raises half of what they propose, so they have been able to effectively get what they want by proposing twice that amount.
The public employee unions' philosophy is that taxpayers provide an endless source of revenue. "The question is not the state's ability to pay, it's the state's willingness to pay," J.N. Musto, the executive director of the University of Hawaii's faculty union, explained to the Star-Bulletin's Sally Apgar. "They (state negotiators) are not willing to afford a salary increase if they have to raise taxes or cut other expenditures."
Too many arbitrators in the past have adopted that outlook, granting budget-busting salary increases that have added heat to Hawaii's "tax hell." They have skipped over the state law requiring that arbitrators' determination of the state's or county's ability to pay salary increases "not be predicated on the premise that the employer may increase or impose new taxes, fees or charges, or develop other sources of revenues."
