Bill to allow legislators to take jobs at UH goes to senators

Lawmakers are advancing a bill to allow the University of Hawaii system to hire members of the state Legislature, a change that would reverse a university ban on employing lawmakers that has been in place at UH since at least 1966.

The current Board of Regents policy requires that an employee of the UH system take leave of absence without pay while campaigning for political office, and requires the employee to resign from university service before he or she takes office upon winning an election.

That policy doesn’t sit well with some lawmakers, including Rep. Andria Tupola, who was forced to go on unpaid leave while she campaigned for office in 2014, and step down from her position as a full-time music professor at Leeward Community College after she was elected to the state House.

Tupola, (R, Kalaeloa-Ko Olina-Maili) challenged the UH policy at the Hawaii Labor Relations Board, but her case was dismissed. In her first year as a lawmaker, Tupola introduced a measure that would allow candidates to continue in their UH jobs while they campaign, but the measure wasn’t passed.

House Higher Education Committee Chairman Isaac Choy now has taken up the issue because “to have any kind of discriminatory employment practices is bad,” he said.

Choy has introduced House Bill 1556, which would allow anyone elected to a non-statewide public office to work in nonexecutive or nonmanagerial roles at UH.

“I don’t see any reason why they should have any restrictive policy on employment,” Choy said of the university.

The policy forced Rep. Ryan Yamane (D, Mililani-Waipio-Waikele) to resign from a part-time Honolulu Community College lecturer position at the end of 2014 despite “glowing” evaluations of his work, Choy said.

Another lawmaker who was forced to resign from UH was Rep. Gregg Takayama, who was director of communications in the UH-Manoa Chancellor’s Office when he decided to run for office. Takayama said he had to take unpaid leave during the 2012 campaign, and was “voluntarily terminated” after he won election to the House.

Yamane said lawmakers should be allowed to teach part time at UH campuses, and Takayama said he supports Choy’s bill.

“To me, it makes sense that if you’re a legislator who maybe lectures at a community college, and it could be in the interim and it doesn’t interfere with your legislative duties, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed,” Takayama said.

University officials are wary of Choy’s proposal. University of Hawaii Chief Financial Officer Kalbert Young said the UH policy against employing lawmakers is “intended to give the public more assurance that things are always aboveboard.”

There certainly might be advantages to hiring some lawmakers, Young said, “but at the same time we do have to be mindful about how the public perception is, and do we want to be hiring a sitting legislator to be an administrator at the university, or any other role?”

One obvious concern is that someone might use their political leverage as an elected official to win a desirable second job in the UH system. Another possibility is that a campus might deliberately hire a lawmaker to gain leverage to — for example — help win an increase in state funding for that campus.

Still another problem is that a rank-and-file university employee who is also a lawmaker could essentially have oversight over the entire university and its budget during the legislative session, confusing the issue of who the boss is, Young said.

The university cites a 1992 opinion by the state attorney general that concluded the duties of a state lawmaker are “incompatible” with the responsibilities of an employee of any state department, and therefore the state Constitution does not allow anyone to simultaneously fill both of those roles.

That opinion concluded that former state Rep. Len Pepper would have to resign from his job as a clinical psychologist with the state Department of Health in order to serve in the state House.

Attorney General Douglas Chin opposes Choy’s bill, citing those issues and other concerns that the measure would be unconstitutional.

The UH policy against hiring lawmakers is designed to prevent real or perceived conflicts of interest, Young said, and UH wants the public to be aware “that we want to prevent opportunities or perceptions of conflict of interest.”

He added, “We’re very sensitive to it now at the university because we don’t want people to think that their public funds are being misused or mismanaged.”

Earlier this year, Young testified that “being a legislator, county council member, etc., are inherently political positions and the university has previously been criticized in its hiring practices — including by legislators who now seek employment consideration via this measure.”

A primary goal of the new leadership at UH is to re-establish public trust in the university and its management, and “we want to make sure that everything the university does is transparent and accountable,” Young said in an interview.

“It just seems kind of odd — maybe ill-timed, I guess,” Young said of the bill.

Choy said he reviewed the regents’ policy and university’s concerns about conflict of interest, and proposed in his bill that lawmakers could be hired for some UH jobs, but would be banned from executive and managerial positions. That means no one at the level of dean or above could also be a lawmaker, he said.

Choy said he also excluded all full-time professors and some other employees in an effort to deal with concerns about time conflicts between the roles of university employee and lawmaker. “What do you have left? You can’t even be a janitor, so you’re down now to the lecturer’s level,” he said.

“The Legislature is a part-time position, so why should we be restricted from any kind of employment as long as it doesn’t interfere with our legislative work?” he said. “If you really think about it, there’s a lot of value in having people in the Legislature teach.”

The bill was passed by the state House, but was amended in the Senate to allow the university to employ lawmakers or candidates for office as “casual” or temporary employees provided the work schedules of the two jobs are compatible. Casual hires would include lecturers.

Senate Judiciary and Labor Chairman Gil Keith-Agaran said the UH policy dates from a time when lawmakers’ pensions were calculated based on their three highest-paid years of service with state or county governments. That meant lawmakers could get significant increases in their pension payments by obtaining high-paying administrative positions for three years with the university late in their careers.

Administrations would reward favored lawmakers with well-paid state jobs that would increase the lawmakers’ pension benefits, and “apparently the university might have been a dumping ground, so there’s an old policy there,” he said. “It was suggested that that was one way the administration used to get support for certain things, is to promise to certain legislators that we can move you to something that will enhance your retirement.”

Keith-Agaran (D, Waihee-Wailuku-Kahului) said the method used to calculate lawmakers’ pensions has changed since then, which means that isn’t so much of a problem. Keith-Agaran’s committee approved the Senate version of HB 1556 last week to allow the university to hire lawmakers as casual hires, which are positions that do not qualify for retirement benefits.

The measure now goes to the full Senate for further consideration.

By passing the bill “the Legislature has effectively empowered the university to hire elected officials, and I don’t want to hear any complaints about potential opportunities for conflict or disgruntled hires around who the university employs,” Young said.

Choy dismissed Young’s concerns, saying the dual-employment issue has come up “many times,” and that the university has been unable to resolve it.

“I think when it really comes down to it, the university was given a chance to look at their policy. I think his true objection was that he could not fix the policy on his own, that it took me to fix it. That’s probably his true objection,” Choy said of Young.

“I thought that particular policy was not well thought out, and I think with my caveats in there, I think it fixes the problem,” Choy said. “I thought the bill was very, very fair.”