Ginet Hayes, State Board President, the Hawaii Government Employees Association
With the state facing a potential $3.5 billion loss in federal funding, right-wing advocates and think tanks like the Grassroots Institute of Hawaii have found the perfect opportunity to push their fever dream of slashing local government and public services.
Lawmakers have put a lot of savings options on the table, like clawing back some of the state tax cuts signed into law last year and eliminating state positions that have been vacant for more than five years. It’s the latter proposal that has GIH salivating.
In their piece, “With lawmaker will, there are ways to implement tax cuts,” Joe Kent and Jonathan Helton advocate for taking an axe to all vacant positions in state government, not just the ones that have been vacant for a long time. And, of course, their reason is to ensure the richest among us get to keep tax cuts they don’t need.
This is wildly shortsighted.
Any approach to eliminating vacancies in state agencies needs to protect the public, the state workforce and core services from unintended consequences.
Take for instance social workers in the state Department of Human Services’ Child Welfare Services Branch. A 50% vacancy rate has led to severely short-handed staffing that negatively impacts the protection of children and finding them permanent homes where they can thrive. The standard for caseloads set by the Child Welfare League of America is six to eight cases per worker, but Hawaii social workers can have as many as 54 cases. The burden of proof is on the Grassroots Institute to explain how slashing vacant positions — rather than filling them — will improve the lives of Hawaii’s most vulnerable kids.
Now consider Speech Language Pathologists in Hawaii’s public school system. They, too, are operating with 50% of their positions vacant. Rural districts, like Leeward Oahu and neighbor islands, face some of the most significant shortages of these resource professionals who are serving a vulnerable population of kids. Many schools have no dedicated SLP, leaving these specialists to bounce between several campuses to keep up with the demand for services. How does eliminating these vacancies — rather than filling them — serve our community?
Rather than amputating state government to rescue tax cuts for rich people, we should be improving the pay and benefits for existing state workers, some who are paid as low as
$45,000. And we should be looking at why the state is mired in vacant positions to begin with.
Could it be that the pay and benefits lag so far behind the private sector that the new generation of workers would much rather work somewhere else? Is it possible the cause is the state Department of Human Resources Development’s antiquated and onerous recruitment process, which makes highly qualified people wait so long for consideration that they opt for jobs elsewhere?
To make these vacant positions attractive, the money saved from eliminating positions that have been vacant for five years or more should be reinvested to increase the salaries for the people already doing the work. The state can’t afford to continue to lose qualified workers to private industry. Even county government pays an average $20,000 more than the state for similar roles.
My union, the Hawaii Government Employees Association, has long argued that state and local government, with their decades-old salary scales, have been attempting to recruit with both hands tied behind their back. HGEA has called for a dramatic overhaul of pay and benefit packages if government wants to remain competitive in a job market filled with younger workers saddled in student debt.
Tax cuts, especially for the vast majority of everyday workers, should be maintained. But do we really need to impact vital services so the rich can keep theirs?