State worker shuffled from job to job
By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer
The work day of State Sheriff's Division employee David Tong begins and ends at home, when he picks up the phone between 8 and 8:15 a.m. and talks with a woman at the personnel office.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
"I say, 'Hi, Jennifer, it's me,' " Tong said.
David Tong said he's limited to work that doesn't involve walking or physical exertion because of injuries suffered in a traffic accident.
"She says, 'Oh, hi, David. OK.' "
"After that," Tong said, "I'm done for the day."
Tong has been placed on leave with pay and full benefits since Oct. 28 after he complained that he was working at a $3,164-a-month job in a state division that no longer exists.
Tong, 46, has followed a twisted path through the state bureaucracy that has landed him at home on leave.
By trade, he's a sound engineer and television broadcast engineer. He began working for the state in 1990 at KHET, the local public-television channel. He moved to the Hawaii Interactive Television System, an interisland television program operated by the state, then back to KHET.
In 2000, the public television operation was privatized and Tong was laid off. Civil service and union regulations required that he be placed elsewhere in state government, so Tong was offered a job as a deputy sheriff, in part because television engineers are in the same bargaining unit as sheriffs, he said.
His employment situation is complicated by severe back injuries he suffered in a 1994 traffic accident and he's limited to "sedentary" work that doesn't involve walking or physical exertion, Tong said. The state is not disputing Tong's physical disabilities.
Instead of becoming a deputy sheriff, Tong became a clerical supervisor in the civil section of the Sheriff's Division. That office oversaw process servers — individuals who deliver legal papers such as lawsuits and subpoenas for the courts.
According to Tong, two clerks he supervised were transferred and he ended up doing the work of three people, work that kept him on his feet.
He complained and filed grievances, but little changed, Tong said. In mid-2001, he was moved to another job with the Sheriff's Office at Circuit Court. A broadcast engineer employed on paper as a clerk supervisor in the Sheriff's Division's civil section, Tong found himself manning the security station on the first floor of Circuit Court, a job previously handled by a deputy sheriff.
After a deputy sheriff left the station, Tong was placed in charge of the Circuit Court security station, a job previously handled by two armed deputy sheriffs. Tong was not trained for the work and could only move around with the help of crutches.
"The alarm would go off and they'd yell at me for not responding quickly enough. 'I'm on crutches!' I'd say," Tong said.
More grievances and complaints followed, so Tong was moved upstairs to a desk inside Family Court where he had little to do other than log activity reports in the computer. Then in September, his computer was taken away. He sat at a desk with nothing to do in a high-traffic area of the court.
"People would come by, judges would come by, and they'd ask me, 'What do you do? Why are you here?' " Tong said.
"I'd just shrug my shoulders and say, 'I don't know.' "
Then in October he was ordered on leave with pay for a month.
"Based on the pending investigation into your allegations regarding events at the work site, you are placed on leave with pay, until such time as the investigation is completed," Sheriff's Division administrator John Souza informed Tong by letter.
His paid leave has been extended three times so far and is due to expire Feb. 28.
"Usually they send an employee home while they investigate the employee," Tong said. "But with me, I'm at home while they investigate themselves."
Tong has also been ordered to undergo a "work capacity test" Feb. 9 to make sure he is physically capable of performing the tasks of a clerical supervisor.
Public Safety Department director John Peyton, who oversees the Sheriff's Office, said he couldn't discuss Tong's status because it's a personnel matter and because Tong has filed a lawsuit against the department, alleging civil rights violations related to his disabilities and allegations of harassment. Tong said that he has been systematically ostracized, harassed and otherwise punished for complaining about the situation.
But Peyton said "there's a lot more to the picture" than Tong is painting publicly.
The state has filed disciplinary charges against him, alleging that he was late for work on two days last August, falsified his sign-in sheet and then was untruthful about the matter to two superiors.
"I was three minutes late, they say six minutes. I didn't falsify anything," Tong said.
Kathleen Watanabe, director of the state Department of Human Resources Development, said she has cautioned administration officials about placing employees on leave with pay, adding it should be done sparingly, if at all.
The Lingle administration inherited two other cases of long extended leaves and eventually straightened them out, according to Watanabe.
Details of the reasons for those long leaves were not available but Watanabe said one employee at the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii was on leave with pay for six years and another at the Tax Department for 16 months.
The housing agency employee has been terminated and has filed a grievance for reinstatement, Watanabe said. The Tax Department employee has returned to work, according to Watanabe.
Reach Jim Dooley at 535-2447 or jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.
