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Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell is taking a pay cut, but those closest to him are already making more than their predecessors in the Carlisle administration.

That includes Caldwell’s spokesman and his executive assistant.

In fact, total salaries for the six employees in the mayor’s office — which includes Caldwell — are slated to increase by more than 27 percent in Fiscal Year 2014 from $437,940 to $557,460.

Considering that one of those positions was left vacant during the Peter Carlisle administration the jump is closer to 40 percent.

Meanwhile, Caldwell’s spokesman, Jesse Broder Van Dyke, who is one of those whose salary is jumping, said the city doesn’t want to release the names of the six employees “in hopes of protecting the privacy of our staff members.”

This includes withholding the name of the executive assistant to the mayor, who is also Caldwell’s chief of staff.

Caldwell could also eventually benefit under this pay structure. For now, he says he won’t take a 4 percent increase recommended by the Salary Commission or a 5 percent restoration for most city workers.

In the budget, his base salary is $136,428. If the Honolulu City Council approves the Salary Commission’s recent recommendation that will jump to $141,885.

Caldwell has said he won’t . But even then he’d be making more than Carlisle — $129,606 compared to $115,968 for Carlisle who also took a 15 percent pay cut as mayor.

Honolulu City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi has been bothered by the increased salaries in the mayor’s office, saying it doesn’t send the proper message during a time of fiscal restraint.

She said it was difficult to find the information too as it was buried deep inside budget documents that aren’t readily available to the public.

“The public never knows what these people are actually getting paid,” Kobayashi said. “When you’re using taxpayer dollars there has to be accountability and transparency.”

In fact, Kobayashi has introduced a bill to increase transparency in the budgeting process. Bill 18 will require the mayor to submit line-item details about the budget at the same time as his budget proposal. Currently, there’s a five-day window for the administration to submit this information to the council. Bill 18 has already passed a second reading.

Kobayashi said the salary that caught her attention was that of the executive assistant to the mayor, who is essentially the chief of staff of the office.

According to city records, Carlisle had $39,192 budgeted for a someone to take this job part-time, but never hired anyone. Instead he took the money out of the mayor’s office budget and used it to “augment” the salaries of other appointees.

Caldwell’s executive assistant on the other hand gets a salary of $121,896, a more than 200 percent increase.

Two other positions — Caldwell’s press secretary and another executive assistant — saw 15 percent raises over their predecessors, with each position jumping to $90,000 from $78,000.

An from Managing Director Ember Shinn and Budget Director Nelson Koyanagi explains the reason for the salary hikes.

Nearly all the staff were new hires, the letter says, and in order to lure those employees into the public sector the city needed to negotiate higher salaries.

“We offered salaries to new hires based on their years of experience, knowledge and skills, their salary history in prior jobs, and salary necessary to recruit applicants for certain positions.

“In some cases, it was necessary to negotiate the salaries with the applicant and many took substantial pay cuts. Several applicants refused to accept the position because of pay and we found it necessary to increase the salary to attract qualified applicants, especially those coming from the private sector.

“With the change in retirement benefits for new City employes (8% required contribution and 10 year vesting) and reduction in medical benefits (50% co-payment), we discovered that we could no longer attract applicants based on our fringe benefits package and had to match salaries and benefits paid in their previous jobs.”

The administration did ask all of the new hires to take 5 percent pay cuts from their negotiated salary to match the 5 percent cut other city employees have already endured as an across-the-board austerity measure implemented in 2009.

The pay cut is temporary, however, and is expected to be reversed when the pay of other city employees is restored on July 1.

City employees are all expected to receive raises over the next couple years due to the result of recent contract negotiations with the United Public Workers and Hawaii Government Employees Association.

The State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers and the Hawaii Fire Fighters Association are also in arbitration over new contracts. It wouldn’t be surprising for these groups to see raises, too.