2025-07-18 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board July 18, 2025 case is grieveable—and, if it’s not, then the internal complaint procedures would apply. But employees cannot get two bites of the apple and try and win in two different appeal venues. MR. THOMAS: So, I think we always—we tend to have a concern here that those cases where there’s disagreement as to whether we have jurisdiction, end up with the Labor Relations Board, which sits there and chews on it for a year or more. That’s probably outside of your turf but it’s a concern here. CHR. CABANAS: Yeah, we’ve been having quite a bit. In fact, we, just this morning, had one where our decision was for the persons’ appeal to be reviewed by the Hawai ʿ i Labor Relations Board. But we’ve had more—we’ve had, like, about eight from Police that’s been pending for one year from—we call it “HLRB”—but, yeah, and it doesn’t make us feel good because the employees are waiting and once we receive word from them, in writing, that if we have jurisdiction, we will schedule the appeal as soon as possible. But those poor employees are waiting one year, and it doesn’t make us feel good because we don’t want to keep employees waiting like that. So—and they’re getting frustrated as well, so that’s like how it is these days. But— MS. BOTELHO: If we review a grievance and determine it’s not a grieveable matter, we won’t put that in our Step 2 decision that, “it’s not a grieveable matter”—and they do have the right to appeal it to arbitration, and then the arbitrator would decide if it is appealable or not. CHR. CABANAS: And then, just for those that are new—‘cause I know there’re some new employees in the department but whatever the Merit Appeals Board decides, if the appellant does not agree with our decision and order—which is written up by the Attorney General’s Office— and once it comes down, they can file a case to the Third Circuit Court. So, we have one matter right now, pending with the Third Circuit Court—and I think it’s going to be heard sometime in October. Gilbert and Niel weren’t involved in that case but Suzi and J and I, were the Board at that time. So, we have to see what happens with that. But, yeah, so we kind of have to be careful in what we do, what we decide, and listen to the advice of our Attorney General because it can go to the Third Circuit Court. And when it goes to the Third Circuit Court, in this one instance that we have there now, the judge asked for everything—open minutes, executive session meeting minutes—even to read our discussion in an executive session. And they asked for audio tapes—they asked for the whole works so the judge will review that. So, we really—we’re volunteers but we still have a lot of responsibility, and we want to be fair to both sides, the County and to the appellant, and we want to do the right thing. So, this is why it’s important for the Merit Appeals Board members to understand what you folks do. Why you do it? How you do it? When you do it? So that we are knowledgeable about the County and the functions of the various departments, so we can be more well-versed in our questions—not only of the attorneys but of the appellant also. So, sometimes it gets, kind of, tricky. Page 29