Posted on: Monday, May 19, 2003

EDITORIAL
Tie police, fire chief pay to hikes for rank and file

It's a good thing that a salary commission removes some of the politics from pay-raise decisions for the city's management team. But while the commission settles on the amounts of pay increases, the City Council has the ultimate thumbs-up or thumbs-down decision.

That's as it should be. The commission feels people like the mayor, managing director and deputy managing director deserve pay increases, but the council realizes that those raises are better put off to years that don't feature quite so much budget agony.

The fire and police chiefs, and their deputy chiefs, are another story. Like all fire fighters and police officers, they work in a competitive field that has seen many of them recruited by Mainland departments. Honolulu's fire and police chiefs do not ask to be paid on parity with Mainland cities, but only that they get paid more than the people working for them.

Surely that's sensible. For that reason, we support Council Chairman Gary Okino's suggestion to give the chiefs the suggested 5 percent raises if the council decides to fund an arbitrated two-year contract for union firefighters that includes a 10 percent raise.

So if the rank and file get pay increases, so should their leaders.