The seven-member Honolulu Ethics Commission voted unanimously Monday to back a request by Executive Director Chuck Totto to fire off a letter to Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration, essentially urging city officials to retain the agency’s budget request despite the objections of the Department of Corporation Counsel.
Totto has been exchanging verbal barbs with Corporation Counsel Donna Leong about how much authority her agency can exert on the budget of the quasi-independent commission.
The City Charter attaches the commission to Leong’s department "for administrative purposes only."
Leong is on the mainland and was unavailable for Monday’s meeting, but city Managing Director Ember Shinn and First Deputy Corporation Counsel Sheryl Nicholson told commission members that the issue is not power, but the fiscal restraints by the city in the face of a projected $156 million shortfall for fiscal 2015.
"The issue before us is ensuring that the city allocates resources to the Ethics Commission with fiscal prudence and in a way that is responsible to the taxpayer," Nicholson said.
But commissioners, at their meeting Monday, made it clear they agree with Totto and don’t think Leong should be cutting their agency’s budget.
Commissioner Michael Lilly, a former state attorney general, said he does not mind Leong’s department giving an opinion on the commission’s submittal, but "we can have the food fight at the higher level … at the mayor’s level."
Lilly added, "At least from my viewpoint, we’re just attached there as a vehicle through which we exist under some umbrella. But really, we’re … an independent agency doing work that cannot be administered by some entity outside of this commission."
Shinn said she agrees that the semiautonomous nature of the commission is "different," and she pointed out that the city Liquor Commission is among the agencies in a similar position.
"That doesn’t mean that we still can’t have a process to deal with the fiscal management," Shinn said.
All city agencies are being asked to submit detailed justification for any increases for next year’s budget above the current year’s levels as established by the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services, Shinn said.
The commission voted to back the additions, and detailed justifications, that are to be submitted.
Totto is asking for about $75,000 more than the budget Leong’s office has recommended in order to upgrade the investigator’s pay classification, hire an associate executive director and retain its associate legal counsel position. Overall, the annual budget would rise to about $455,000 from the current year’s $370,000. Leong’s department agreed to recommend a $10,000 increase.
Totto argued that the extra position and higher pay levels are necessary because the number of complaints the commission investigates annually jumped to 86 in fiscal 2013 from 17 in 2002, an increase of 400 percent. What’s being sought would only help the commission "keep its head above water" with its workload, he said.
Shinn, who has not seen the details of the commission budget proposal, said all agencies are suffering.
Commissioner Stephen Silva said he doesn’t understand why the administration is objecting to raising the pay grade for its investigator position, filled three months ago by retired Honolulu police Capt. Letha DeCaires, when it is clear that her skills are helping the city save money by ferreting out financial abuses.
"What I’m hearing here is, basically, our investigator is saving the city a whole chunk of money, and we’re arguing about $10,000," Silva told Nicholson. "So what’s the problem?"
The Department of Corporation Counsel is not disapproving the commission’s request to upgrade the investigator’s pay level, Nicholson said. "What we are saying is that doing so is going to cause the budget to exceed the budget ceiling further than it already does."
The commission’s major tasks are to instruct the city’s employees about ethical conduct, investigate allegations of misconduct and advise agencies and employees who ask about potential ethical breaches.
