As March turned into April, the focus of the City and County of Honolulu and the State of Hawai‘i shifted from circulating every idea to figuring out how to pay for it.
And it seems that both of them are taking a look at empty desks and wondering if savings can be found from them.
PC: Sheepsmating666Raymond Pang, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons
While it’s not the first time either the state or city has tried to make savings from vacant positions, it’s one of those things that sounds good in theory but doesn’t always play out as expected when it comes to execution. Let’s take a look at what’s been proposed recently.
For the City and County of Honolulu, the plan is to take $25 million from the $146 million set aside for vacant positions. The idea is to use this money to help cover some of the hefty costs for major projects like upgrading the wastewater infrastructure. This move comes as a response to a proposed 115% increase in sewer fees, a charge meant to fund the upgrades.
On the state side, the Hawai‘i Senate’s budget committee has proposed eliminating $50 million in state jobs that have been vacant for at least five years. This is, in part, a way to offset the revenue lost from the historic income tax cuts the Governor passed in 2024. The legislature is now scrambling to find savings to make up for the drop in income.
Both the state and the city seem determined not to raise taxes to fill in these gaps.
Honolulu’s Mayor, in his State of the City address this past March, made it clear that he would not propose any new taxes during his term, which ends in 2028. This pledge is partly grounded in the city’s growing revenues from rising home prices and assessments, which, regardless of tax rates, continue to bolster the City’s financial resources.
One might draw a parallel to Washington, where Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has been aggressively cutting federal government expenses. If you’re a supporter of DOGE, you might view these local efforts as a “DOGE, Hawaiian Style” move.
But that comparison doesn’t quite hit the mark.
PC: Czeva, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
No one in either the City or State is calling for widespread layoffs. Instead, the cuts are targeted, focused on addressing specific needs such as funding sewer projects and compensating for unexpected federal fund shortages.
Still, while this idea may look “dynamite on paper”, it is not a magic bullet.
The real question, still looming, is what happens next year when the bills keep coming in, but there are no more vacant positions to shuffle around. This is, by its very nature, a one-time fix. It solves the immediate problem, but it doesn’t do much for the long-term budget challenges down the road.
And, as we know, the need for sewer system upgrades in Honolulu and the federal funding shortfall for both the city and state won’t go away anytime soon.
Politics Hawaii with Stan Fichtman is a recipient of a 2023 Hawaii Society of Professional Journalist award.