2018-03-29 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board MS. NAMAHOE: Wonderful. March 29, 2018 MR. BRILHANTE: And that's the steps that are taken right now. So, what I'll do is I'll make sure that we get that communicationagain, submitted to the MAB in regards to the audit response. I'll call it a "progress report," `cause there's still some issues lingering. Like I mentioned, I think the biggest hurdle right now is trying to get an entity identified as being, like, the "go to" person for the whistleblower. So much of what the audit said was, "Oh, people were still scared. They didn't know what to do. That's why they didn't report. They felt trapped." So as it comes to the whistleblower provisions, I've had numerous discussions with the State Ombudsman and, unfortunately, again, it's a logistics problem. They're in Honolulu, they don't have the resources available to send inspector or individuals up here when a report comes in. So, they've been very reluctant to take on that responsibility. The prosecutor's office, they're not— they—this ottheythis is something that they're not really wanting to get directly involved with. So, we're still, kind of, trying to identify an entity that would be able to serve as, kind of, like that safe harbor for the employees who feel that they've witnessed something, they want to report it to somebody, but there's that fear of retaliation. And I'm not saying the audit was very clear—it specifically, the audit specifically identified that that was transparent. That was taking place. But I—and I think we have a duty to ensure that our employees that they should never feel like they were trapped. I think the language that was used in the audit was that, to a certain extent, they felt like hostages. To have our employees have that feeling of—to have that communicatedI think that that's something that needs to be addressed. Quite honestly, the HRS specifically has a whistleblower provision. The only problem is, it doesn't identify any place where you can make your—file your complaint with. It just identifies the protections that an employee will receive once they submit a claim, but to whom (inaudible) now we're trying that's the, again, the component of that, that we're trying to make sure it gets in place. MS. NAMAHOE: So, without taking you too far off on that tangent and for those of us that are not government employeesI hear this and I think the bargaining employees the union-base— they actually have a pathway. It's the other two groups of employees that do not. Correct? And those would be the ones that wouldI'm assuming would need the whistleblowing cleaning house? MR. BRILHANTE: Yeah, I think a lot of the employees who felt—who communicated that they felt somewhat stuck or they felt trapped or they felt like they're, kind of, caught in the middle or exempt employees, mid-level managers or, to a certain extent, even some department heads even said"Well, they were told to do it." And I'm not sure a department head—in my mind as I'm evaluating this, I reallyI can't really come up with a scenario where a department head would submit a whistleblower claim, I think against what their boss who appointed them. So, that seems somewhat farfetched conceptually. Page 17