Honolulu Department’s OT Jumps 49 Percent, Director Won’t Talk About It
A Honolulu department that saw overtime spending spike 49 percent last year says it can’t readily determine which employees are responsible for the increase.
Records detailing overtime paid to individual staffers of the Honolulu Department of Enterprise Services are “not readily retrievable” and would “require extensive agency efforts to search, review and segregate,” according to city officials.
Enterprise Services runs the Honolulu Zoo, city golf courses, as well as the Neal Blaisdell Center and the Waikiki Shell.
“I’ll have to look into what Enterprise Services is doing, but ideally you’d want that kind of feedback or accountability for all of your employees,” Honolulu Managing Director Doug Chin told Civil Beat last week. “I have to be able to see what their situation was.”
The department’s director, Sid Quintal, refused an interview request, writing in an email that he has “no comment,” and referring Civil Beat to Chin.
Enterprise Services Administrative Services Officer Kimberly Hashiro told Civil Beat that the department said it could retrieve redacted versions of the requested overtime records for a fee of $665.25 (lowered from her original estimate of $825.25).
But in a strange development, a staffer in the city’s Budget and Fiscal Services department emailed Civil Beat a day later, outright rejecting the request.
“We are not able to provide the Department of Enterprises Services overtime information that you requested at this time,” Budget and Fiscal Services Deputy Director Nelson Koyanagi wrote.
That was surprising, given that last year a different city department — Facility Maintenance — gave Civil Beat its overtime totals and made available at no charge overtime payroll sheets detailing the names of workers and the overtime they earned.
Koyanagi said retrieving the Enterprise Services records would require “extensive” research and review work. He did not respond to an email inquiry Friday about the discrepancy between his response and Hashiro’s response. It was a city holiday.
Our focus on Enterprise Services stemmed from another document request.
When Civil Beat obtained records detailing the amount city departments paid in overtime, we found the city has been spending steadily less on overtime since 2008.
But Enterprises Services was one of a handful of departments with overtime that climbed during that time. The department paid $389,139 from July to December 2010, an increase of $127,925, or 49 percent, from 2009.
