With no end in sight to the staffing vacancy crisis in state and local government, officials are once again admitting what HGEA has long contended: inadequate pay and benefits for public service jobs are hindering the recruitment and retainment of employees.
“The pay is probably the biggest challenge,” said Dawn Apuna, the city’s director of the Department of Planning and Permitting, according to The Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Apuna sits on the state Legislature’s task force to examine bottlenecks in Hawaii’s permitting process. “Private pays more, and then you have the feds … they pay even higher.”
HGEA has consistently argued that state and local government, with their decades-old salary scales, have been attempting to recruit with both hands tied behind their back. We’ve called for a dramatic overhaul of pay and benefit packages if government wants to remain competitive in a job market filled with younger workers saddled in student debt and desiring flexible work arrangements.
The sobering vacancy picture at Honolulu’s DPP mimics that of many other departments across government. In commercial property permitting, 14 out of 33 positions are vacant. Six out of 32 positions are vacant in residential permitting. The situation on Maui isn’t all that different, according to the Star-Advertiser, with the county’s Department of Public Works reporting five vacancies out of 14 positions.
Pay and benefits for public service jobs lag so far behind the private sector that applicants often balk at the paltry salaries, Apuna said.
“People won’t even come for an interview just knowing what the salary range is,” she said.