The chatter at the water cooler at many offices around town would suggest that city officials are paid too much. Grousing about the performance of public employees, especially elected ones, is an American tradition. In the popular litany of complaints about politicians, the sins of some are projected on all.

Now a committee of the Honolulu Salary Commission is proposing 6 percent pay raises for the mayor and members of the City Council. Police and fire chiefs would get 8 percent raises, and the biggest raise — 9 percent — would go to the city prosecutor.

According to popular thinking, the community should rail against this idea, particularly at a time of fiscal constraint. But the better reaction is precisely the opposite. These salary increases should be approved by the commission and enacted by the council.

Rather than stint on this expenditure, taxpayers need to hold these officials, their employees, accountable for the job they do. The cost — a competitive salary — is simply an investment that can bring top professionals to the job.

In the case of police and fire chiefs, the bargaining power of the rank-and-file unions has raised the pay scale at the foundations, so higher compensation for the top brass, and for the city prosecutor, is logical.

As for the pay rates of the mayor and council, those have been matters of debate almost from Honolulu's incorporation a century ago.

The first council members — or supervisors, as they were called — were paid $50 a month, a part-time salary even then. When a new city charter became law upon statehood, The Advertiser editorialized at the time that a city on the verge of explosive growth and development needed a full-time council.

That would still be the ideal. The better that decision-makers are compensated for their public duties, the less of a temptation competing employment and outside financial gains become.

As Honolulu now stands on the brink of redevelopment along the planned transit corridor, that independence has never been so critical.