2020-09-30 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board September 30, 2020 So, at the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the mayor authorized 14 days of administrative leave. And we're prettywe instructed the departments—and that—all these memorandums come through the Human Resources Department. So, we instructed the department heads to be very considerate and be very lenient and liberal with issuance of these or authorizing these type of request. So, we afforded 14 days. We were the only jurisdiction in the State to allow County workers who felt the anxiety, who had—who felt that they may be—have to deal with COVID at work or if they had underlying health conditions. The mayor afforded them 14 days of paid administrative leave without much proof or documentation, which was well received. The—as the pandemic progressed and we became more and more understanding of what the causes were—transmittal causes were closer related to and how that affected our people and how that affected the Kupuna and the kids. And so, what happened was the federal government got involved, and the federal government issued the Family First Coronavirus Response Act. And under that act, again, it afforded our County employees who are, in this case, was much broader—across the nation, but as we drilled it down to our County employees, it afforded them 14 days or 80 hours of administrative leave if they were directly affected by the coronavirus, the impacts of the virus, if they had kids who were home from school and they couldn't get supervision for them—adequate supervision. It gave them up to, I believe, it was up to 12 weeks of leave—afforded them up to 12 weeks of leave for them to adequately provide that supervision for their young kids. And so, we—it was that—those type of rules and regulations, again, they fall under HR to ensure that proper time is calculated, proper request are granted, and the (inaudible), people have an understanding. So in response to the federal relief act, we developed FAQ's and we distributed those FAQ's to all the County employees so that they could have a better understanding of their rights and what they're entitled to, and what the parameters are, and what the restrictions are. So we did that. And the final thing was, again, as the virus became more and more—we had a spike here on the Island of Hawaii—and once that spike came into play, we're getting a lot of positives from what was called "community-based positives." And that was the first time we started experiencing that. And what that means is just general members of the community were testing positive for the virus. So, that means the virus was being transmitted through regular community interactions as opposed to previous to that—most of the transmittals was from people who travelled outside of the State. They—either they went to California or New York or someplace on the mainland and they came back and they brought the virus with them, whether it be residents returning from vacation or from wherever it may be, as well as flight crews and flight attendants and pilots and the like. So, with that in mind, as the exposure grew—again, to relieve the anxiety of our employees, the mayor issued a special order where he granted five days of administrative leave and this is a Page 14