2005-01 Disclosure of Exact Salaries OIP Opinion 05-03

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computer run,"which presumably contains the names, positions, and exact (or proposed) salaries of all employees. Kauai's Charter requires this proposed annual budget (which is essentially legislation) to be public, via Section 19.07(A) (recited in pertinent part only): Upon receipt of the proposed annual budget, the Council shall immediately publish a notice in a newspaper of general circulation in the county, setting forth (1) a summary of the estimated revenues, including any new sources of revenues, and expenditures; (2) that copies of the budget are available at the office of the county clerk; (3) the date, time and place at which the council will commence its public hearings upon the proposed budget, which shall not be less than ten days after the date of the publication of such notice. Similarly, Hawaii County's budget ordinance is made public via Article X, Section 10-2(d) of the Hawaii County Charter (2000): Upon submission, the budgets, the programs and message shall be a public record in the office of the clerk of the county council and shall be open to public inspection. The mayor shall at the same time make available copies of the budgets, the programs and message for distribution to interested persons. In Hawaii County, the names and exact salaries of civil servants have not been provided to the Council. You are correct in noting that we have historically taken the position that this information could not be provided to them, since these employees had a significant privacy interest in this information. I surmise your present request is what to do, in light of OIP Opinion No. 05-03, in the event our Council or a member of the public makes a request for this detailed information. The "balancing" that is required under such circumstances was not done in OIP Opinion No. 05-03, since the OIP believed the Kauai Charter provision "trumped" the UIPA in favor of disclosure. Thus, we in Hawaii County are faced with the task of balancing the employee's privacy interest against the public's interest in disclosure. Balancing an employee's right to "privacy"against the public's right to know As a starting point, it is a foregone conclusion our laws do not consider financial information (i.e., the exact salaries) of government employees, whether civil service or not, to be protected under the Right to Privacy clause of the Hawaii State Constitution. Nakano v. Matayoshi, 68 Hawaii 140, 149, 706 P.2d 814, 819 (1985).