2018-03-29 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board March 29, 2018 So, I just want to assure each and every one of you that we went through the formal process. We submitted what is called a "RAE" to the Finance Department. We were just notified that Finance did authorize the overage of the funds to cover the lunch, again, a reasonable lunch at Kenichi's. So, like I said, it's not going to break the bank, but we do have that formal authorization moving forward. Just so that there's no confusion with that. So, I apologize for any confusion I may have caused. I appreciate Corp. Counsel's quick response and J's opinion was absolutely on point. If I was there treating you to lunch in my official capacity, that would be problematic. And so, I just wanted to make sure that, by all means, that wasn't intended. Director's Report (Item 7) Items of Current Interest MR. BRILHANTE: Now, to new business—what I'd like to do at this time, I'd like to introduce Mr. Allan Yokoyama. I appoint I requested and he accepted appointment as being my Deputy for the Department of HR. Now, Allan comes in with a lot of background specifically in workers' comp and CHR. TULANG: Can you have Allan come over to the table? MR. BRILHANTE: YeahAllan, come up. He has a strong workers' comp background. He, initially, came to the County from Honolulu to fill the position when Charmaine and Ryan Chong were promoted to Parks and Rec. Director and Deputy. Ryan was filling the position of the Division Head for our Workers' Comp and Safety Division. So, when Ryan took that position through an open competitive recruitment—Allan was offered the job to serve in that capacity as the interim division head and he performed the duties for about 3 or 4 months and then, as we know, Ryan and Charmaine resigned and came back. So, Allan was somewhat out of a job. But—so what I did, we really appreciated the work and we really valued the work that Allan performed during this 4 -month period of time. So, I maintained his employment through an employee contract and he came in and he oversaw there was a specific need for Allan at the time because workers' comp was transitioning their software program the work comp to a new vendorNAVRISK—and there was a lot of issues going back and forth. Any time there's a major software transition like that—with database and everything there's issues with SOP'S, there's issues with"Oh, we used to do this to get this information and this is the reports we got. And now we're doing this, and this report" there's all these problems associated with that. So, I maintained Allan on a contract, specifically, to address that transition and he did really well. So, moving forward, I met with the mayor when I was making my decision and, actually, the mayor called me in, like, three times to his office. He wanted to know who my deputy was Page 8