Editorial: Unhappiness at M.E. office

Last time, it took about three years to fill the post of Oahu chief medical examiner (M.E.). Let’s hope that it won’t take as long this time around.

This is the highest-paid city government job at $310,000 yearly, but the work obviously isn’t for most, having to perform autopsies and run the city morgue. Further, the foggy circumstances under which current M.E., Christopher Happy, is leaving at month’s end suggest other trying conditions beyond the work itself.

Officially, Happy is quitting, citing in his resignation letter that “I must return home to Los Angeles to attend to a family member’s illness.” But his resignation after six years on the job apparently pre-empted a firing: City Council Chairman Ikaika Anderson said that on Oct. 17, then-Acting Mayor Roy Amemiya (filling in for the out-of-town Mayor Kirk Caldwell) called “to inform me that Dr. Happy was being dismissed for cause.”

Termination would have triggered a public hearing before the Council — but resignation now moots that airing of concerns.

One tidbit from a city spokesman on Tuesday noted that Happy completed 751 autopsy reports between Oct. 17, 2016, and Oct. 17, 2019, and that another 896 were pending. That seems a considerable backlog for the M.E. team.

In past news coverage, Happy had cited difficulties due to Oahu’s growing population; an overcrowded morgue; substandard facilities, including leaking roofs; and being short-staffed for autopsies. “We went from doing 650 cases a year to over 1,000 cases a year,” he said in April 2018.

Compared with other city agencies such as Parks and Recreation, Transportation or Permitting, the needs of the Medical Examiner’s Office are rarely top-of-mind for the public. But the M.E. provides crucial services that deal with justice, death and closure. It’s not a happy job, to be sure, but it’s essential that conditions improve and an adept successor be confirmed, as quickly as possible.