2023-08-30 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board MR. PATEL: Yes. August 30, 2023 CHR. CABANAS: Like, for instance, the State and the City their scope is way, way bigger than the neighbor island scope—although they're still responsible for the administration of the central HR program for their respective county. So, I'm curious to see what the that salary comparison Is. MS. MATHEWS: Does the salary comparison actually has some data, such as the number of people they're supervising, the number of people on the island, or is it just strictly Maui County is "x." MR. PATEL: I believe what Glynis is going to obtain now, it's just the number the salary itself. Not the population size—although that is something the salary commission is also looking at—population size, size of the department. That's why, in part, the reason for their request for this information is to understand how each department functions, what their area of responsibility isso that they can make a rationed decisiona rational decision. CHR. CABANAS: So, this 2019 letter talks about—when you talk about scope, it's not only the number of employees the department employs, it talks about the organizational structure which, back then, it was 7 -now it's 88 different division in HR. And then, it talks about the operating budget and what challenges the department faces, et cetera, overtime and all of that. But it doesn't talk about the actual workforce. In other words, the number of employees in the County. This doesn't say that. So, it used to be, what -2,800 employees in the County. It's going to be different for each island but that's part of the scope. Yeah. And the overtime—because the overtime—even when I was there—we couldn't claim overtime. We adjusted our hours. That's not even listed here in this 2019 letter. It talks about the director going to the EOC and he doesn't get any compensation and the department hosting the Employee of the Year—but what about the many times employees had to work overtime. We didn't claim cash. But the department allowed us to do was just adjust our hours, which in essence is not really, to me, the right thing to do. But it doesn't take that into the picture so that anyone looking at it will see, "Wow, they were really working all those hours. They didn't get compensated for, but their hours were being adjusted." It doesn't take that. And that, to me, changes the whole picture of it. The department has historically run lean and means that the staff really have to work very efficiently and effectively to get all that work done. That doesn't show it—it's not shown here and to me it should be shown here, `cause that is actually the reality. That's the fact. And, to me, that's not fair to the employees when they don't show it like that. So, I just wanted to state that. But, yeah, the comparative data is really, really important. And the other thing I want to just note is what is the highest paid manager in that—in your department. That should also be taken into Page 13