Posted on: Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Officials defend 'residents only' rule

By Robbie Dingeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

A state law that requires those who apply for state and county jobs to be Hawai'i residents allows government to consider whether applicants are former residents, are applying to be police officers or are seeking hard-to-fill jobs.

Officials said the law hasn't created major hiring problems because it still allows some nonresidents to be considered. While those exceptions make the state law less of a hindrance to hiring government workers, the attorney challenging the law said the exception gives further evidence that the law is unconstitutional.

Last week, Florida resident Kevin Walsh filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down the residency requirement for city positions after he was rejected for three city jobs.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai'i is representing Walsh. Legal director Lois Perrin yesterday said the law is inherently discriminatory.

"Citizens choose their states; states do not choose their citizens," she said.

City spokesman Bill Brennan said city officials will meet with the ACLU on the issue next week. In general, he said, the city administration doesn't believe this has been an impediment to hiring.

"It does not preclude the city from hiring nonresidents," Brennan said. "We have accepted nonresidents for employment in the past."

State human resources and Department of Education officials were not available to comment yesterday afternoon on how the law affects their hiring.

Perrin also said that the different counties have interpreted the law in different ways. "Each county has established its own policy which is based in part on the state statute," she said.

On the city's Web site, the residency requirement appears in big bright red letters. And Perrin said it's likely that many of those affected by the requirement don't even apply. "The majority who come across the Web sites that say do not apply, do not apply."

But, she said, having the state requirement effectively discourages an unknown number of people. Perrin said Walsh had applied for data processing and computer programmer jobs that had been unfilled for more than a year.

She noted that the state waives the residency requirements for teachers because of the shortage, and for police officers and other difficult-to-fill jobs. "It's a very odd statute," Perrin said, because it waives the residency requirement when the employers really need to hire.

With 76,000 state jobs statewide and 17,000 municipal jobs, she said, such a requirement potentially affects about 16 percent of the state's jobs overall.

She recalled that the city administration in the past also argued against the residency requirement. That was in 1985, when former Mayor Frank Fasi hired John Hirten to serve in his Cabinet, when the state raised the issue. By the time the state Supreme Court ruled, Hirten had lived here for more than a year and the point was moot.

Perrin said a similar law requiring a one-year residency was struck down in federal District Court.

She said she's aware of only a handful of states, including Alaska, that have residency requirements.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2429.