2022-05-16 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board May 16, 2022 CHR. CABANAS: Okay, while you're reviewing your notes—Mr. Leopoldino, do you have any questions or comments? MR. LEOPOLDINO: I do. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to thank you very much for putting this together. I did review it and it is very helpful, and it will be a great resource for our Recruitment and Examination team. Thank you very much for putting this together. I am excited to present this to our R&E team. Thank you. CHR. CABANAS: You're very welcome. The only reason why I did this was just to get it on the record before my memory starts to go as the years go by. I mean, I'm not forgetful now, but you know how that goes. And, also, it would just help everyone because we don't have time to go through files and records and put all this information together. So, this was really a general synopsis of my recollection, `cause I couldn't look at files for exact dates or anything like that. And the intent is really to have it memorialized. What you do with it is up—it's information. You can—it's just to give you an idea what was done but it doesn't hold you back from implementing new strategies, doing new things but it gives you a basis so that you know what the history was—not only for the division but for the department, especially with Civil Service Reform and the thoughts that everyone had back then in the early 2000's. So, you're very welcome. Ms. Mathews, did you find the duplication? MS. MATHEWS: No, but I remember what one of my issues was—and I can't remember where it is in there. And that had to do with somebody applying from another county for a similar promotion kind of thing. And there wasn't a back check, the same way as a new application would have had. So, they're assumed to be valid because they're doing the same job elsewhere. And the reason I bring this up is because we had a recent case where, in Honolulu, a master's degree—any master's degree was appropriate. And on the Big Island it is not, which means a person on Oahu could have applied for that same job, having a degree that didn't fit that criteria that gets slid in without aI mean, there's a discrepancy there, for me. Personally, I think the master's degree is a master's degree, is a master's degree—and that problem would go away. But I just find it, kind of, disconcerting that we assume that—since the person passed there, that they pass here. CHR. CABANAS: No. We all have our own perceptions and thoughts and we respect them. I'm going to just make one comment and it's going to go back to the civil service reform measures that occurred. Page 8