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UPDATED: 3/10/11 9:52 a.m.

A week after presenting his first budget as Honolulu mayor, Peter Carlisle on Tuesday night became the city’s first mayor to upload line-by-line spending details to a aimed at improving government transparency. An examination of the documents reveals the mayor is increasing spending in two-thirds of the city’s 23 departments.

A notable exception to the overall growth is in the mayor’s own office: He’s cutting 8 percent from the Office of the Mayor, from $584,155 to $534,775. He also appeared before the Salary Commission this week, and asked it not to recommend a raise for him.

The biggest hikes in Carlisle’s $1.9 billion operating budget are for paying down city debt and paying city workers’ pensions and health benefits. Carlisle is bumping health and retirement spending 22 percent, from $207 million to $252 million. He’s increasing debt service payment about 15 percent, from $335 million to $383 million.

Carlisle has emphasized these areas as the key reasons his budget is 6 percent higher than the operating budget he inherited from former Mayor Mufi Hannemann.

But an examination of his budget shows department spending is also growing, even though he advocated cuts during the mayoral campaign. Carlisle is proposing dramatically reducing capital construction spending, by almost $300 million.

Carlisle says the bulk of the departmental increases come from eliminating 24 mandatory furlough days Hannemann instituted.

“Once you take the furlough money back, you have to make it up somewhere,” Carlisle told Civil Beat. “I can’t imagine you’d find any raises in there. Absolutely not. Everybody’s been told we are seriously tightening our belts.”

Among the biggest increases is an 8 percent hike for the Department of Enterprise Services, the agency that runs the Honolulu Zoo, city golf courses and the Neal Blaisdell Center. The department is keeping its work force constant, with 335 full-time-equivalent employees, and Carlisle recommends it should get $20.9 million, compared with $19.3 million this year.

But that increase is smaller than it appears. The 8 percent growth next year makes up for years of shrinking Enterprise Services spending. Compared with the budget from two years ago, Enterprise Services is getting a 3 percent bump.

Carlisle is recommending increasing the Department of Emergency Services budget 4 percent, from $32.9 million to $34.2 million. The department’s work force would stay constant at 476 full-time-equivalent employees. Of that $1.3 million increase, about $635,000 will go toward hiring water safety officers and buying equipment for Honolulu to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in November.

Other departments with slightly smaller growth next year are continuing larger growth trends. The Department of Design and Construction is slated to get $21.8 million, up 3 percent from this year and a 7 percent increase from two years ago.

Spending in the Department of Environmental Services would increase to $251.9 million, up 1 percent from this year after a 26 percent hike last year.

UPDATE Carlisle also recommends a 1 percent increase for the Department of Transportation, bringing its budget to $225.7 million and continuing a growth trend that amounts to 12 percent compared with two years ago. That growth comes even as the department loses about 66¹ workers, who will split off to become the semi-autonomous Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit, or HART. The proposed budget for that agency is $21 million.

Transportation Services Director Wayne Yoshioka told Civil Beat most of the increase is due to scheduled pay raises for TheBus employees.

“We are not increasing the work force there, but there are negotiated wage and salary increases for over 1,000 employees,” Yoshioka wrote in an e-mail. “There is also some gain in DTS salaries as we discontinue furloughs and accommodate step salary increases. Also imbedded in our budget are costs associated with APEC that will occur later this year.”

If Carlisle gets the City Council and State of Hawaii Police Officers Union to agree to a 1 percent cut to the Honolulu Police Department’s budget, it will still mean HPD is getting 11 percent more than it got two years ago. Similarly, a 2 percent cut to the Honolulu Fire Department’s budget would still represent a 16 percent increase over two years ago.

Carlisle’s spending plan assumes labor unions will agree to cuts totaling at least 5 percent, but Gov. Neil Abercrombie is better positioned to set the tone at the bargaining table.

The mayor is proposing cutting spending in six departments — including his own — and keeping it constant in two departments. The department facing the biggest cut is the Department of Planning and Permitting. Carlise wants to cut its budget 12 percent, from $18.9 million to $16.7 million. That’s at least in part because the department’s Transit-Oriented Development staffers will become part of HART, so the Planning Department will lose 12 employees.

Carlisle is also recommending less money for the Neighborhood Commission, which would get about $842,473, 9 percent less than this year.

City and County of Honolulu Growth