The Honolulu Salary Commission wants to give the city’s chief medical examiner a $400,000 salary for the next fiscal year — and a similar salary to the deputy medical examiner.
Chief Medical Examiner Masahiko Kobayashi is already the City and County of Honolulu’s highest-paid official with a salary of $363,000 last year. The commission’s recommendation would amount to a 10% raise.
The nearly $40,000 raise would also apply to the chief’s first deputy, whose new salary would be $390,000.
It’s the second straight year the top medical examiner positions would get significant salary bumps from the commission. In 2022 the chief medical examiner's salary was $310,000, and the deputy’s salary was $273,000.
The commission wants another big raise for the positions because of the shortage at the city’s Department of the Medical Examiner.
In written testimony in February, Kobayashi told the commission that his staffing level is “unsustainable.” He said four forensic pathologists, including himself, have been sharing an “increased caseload” since 2023.
The deputy medical examiner position has been vacant since 2019, and the city has struggled to hire and retain forensic pathologists. Kobayashi’s testimony noted that the cost of living on O‘ahu keeps candidates away despite the competitive pay.
“I think it's unfair for us to expect Dr. Kobayashi to continue to stay in this role indefinitely and carry the entire brunt of our community's needs for this. I think we have to make a serious decision this year. We tried last year, we gave (the medical examiner positions) a serious bump, and it just wasn't even enough to get bites — we didn't even get serious applications,” commission member Rebecca Soon said during a meeting this week.
The new $400,000 salary was described as an in-between option. The commission established a Permitted Interaction Group, or PIG, made up of some of the commissioners to study the salaries of top city officials in other jurisdictions and recommend salaries to the commission as a whole.
It said in a presentation last month that, in private practice, a $387,000 salary is at the 50th percentile for pathology compensation level, and $461,000 is at the 75th percentile.
Commission Chair Malia Espinda suggested a new salary between those two.
“We arrived, sort of, in a middle ground of $400,000, and then we comparatively added to the deputy medical examiner. One part is retention, and one part is actually recruitment. … We don't want to lose our medical examiner, and we want to help him get a deputy,” Espinda said.
The commission also recommends smaller raises for the mayor, managing director, deputy managing director and the Honolulu City Council chair, ranging between roughly $3,000 and $7,000.
Last month the PIG recommended no salary increase for those positions. However, the commission wants to establish small, stepwise raises for the top positions instead of having stagnant salaries for years and then trying to play catch-up.
The commission said that’s what led to its controversial decision last year to give 64% raises to city councilmembers.
“Last year, our focus was not around raises or around percentages of raises for that position. Our focus was around taking an actual look at the charter to try to understand what the councilmembers actually do,” Soon said.
The commission compared councilmembers to — and tied their pay to — the heads of city divisions.
Soon noted that the raises are a small fraction of the city’s proposed $3.63 billion operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year, but argued that it helps attract quality employees to the city government.
Soon added, “These total reasons come up to $300,000, cumulative. … The scarcity mentality of the government has led to us having 35% vacancy (in the city), and so I think that we're trying to set the tone for investing in our workforce, investing in attracting quality people, paying what the market is paying.”
In April the salary commission will vote on its official salary schedule recommendation, which then has to be reviewed by the city council.
