Editor’s Note: Our popular public employees salaries database is back. This year, we’ve combined all agencies in a single database, but we’ll still be breaking out stories on state and city departments in the coming weeks. Today: State employees, except for those working in education, which we’ll report on separately.
It pays to be in public health — a lot, at least for those at the top.
The state could hire 30 office clerks for the price of one top surgeon. Or four judges for one staff physician.
Being male certainly doesn鈥檛 hurt either. Only six of the top 25 highest-paid doctors in聽., the state鈥檚 public hospital system, are women 鈥 and none are in the top quarter percentile earning more than $600,000 a year.
In response to an open-records request, state agencies provided salary ranges for nearly 21,000 state employees, including the Judiciary, HHSC, the Legislature, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and 19 state departments. The data is for fiscal 2016, which began July 1.
This data doesn鈥檛 include the Department of Education, which has well over 22,000 employees, or the University of Hawaii. Civil Beat will be reporting on those separately.
Last month, we published salary information for 9,333 employees of the City and County of Honolulu. You can read that report here.
In this batch of state employees, all but one of the top 40 highest-paid workers were in public health. The lone exception was George Szigeti, executive director of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, who earned a salary of $270,000.
There are a couple of dozen physicians聽making聽between $300,000 and $780,000, and a few hundred nurses earning $90,000 to $120,000 a year.
At least 556 people made a salary of $100,000 or more, which means 20,196 workers made less than that.
Judge is聽another top-tier position. Roughly 30 Circuit Court judges earn $193,248 annually, and another 30-plus District Court judges each make $182,112.
The state 聽offers the highest pay. Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald earned $222,480 in 2015, just a bit higher than the other four justices.
The head of the state executive branch, Gov. David Ige, received a salary of $149,556 in 2015.
The 76 state lawmakers who decide how much money to聽appropriate for the vast majority of state jobs each earned $59,004 last fiscal year, save for the head of the Senate and House, who each made $66,504.
Knowing how much state employees earn provides greater government transparency and helps the public decide if the state is spending its taxpayer dollars wisely. This is one of Civil Beat鈥檚 primary missions and the reason we are publishing the state salary database again this year.
As former Civil Beat editor John Temple wrote in 2010, the first year we published the salaries, 鈥減roviding data on how government works is central to our commitment to helping you understand local issues, including how government operates and how much it costs.鈥 The more people know, the better.
Here’s a look at the top 25 highest-paid state聽officials as of last July 1, not counting UH or DOE.
Name | Title | Department | Salary |
David Engle | Staff Surgeon | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $786,000 |
Joseph Chambers | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $780,000 |
Colin Lee | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $780,000 |
Michael Dang | Staff Surgeon | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $625,000 |
Jay Boughanem | Staff Surgeon | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $600,000 |
Tracy Dorheim | Staff Surgeon | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $570,000 |
Nathan Zilz | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $500,000 |
Douglas Ching | Staff Surgeon | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $490,000 |
Rory O’Connor | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $475,000 |
Robert Dy | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $430,000 |
Victor Bochkarev | Staff Surgeon | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $370,000 |
Joshua Pierce | Staff Surgeon | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $370,000 |
Sharada Chaitra | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $365,000 |
Lovina Sabnani | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $365,000 |
Daniel Hudak | Staff Surgeon | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $360,000 |
Eliot Demello | Medical Director | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $354,487 |
Donald Hill | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $350,000 |
Mouhamed Kannass | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $350,000 |
John De Caro | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $335,000 |
Michael Clark | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $327,134 |
Robert Millard | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $327,134 |
Leslie Oberst | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $325,000 |
Anthony Lim | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $320,000 |
Elisabeth Biuk-Aghai | Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $317,400 |
Connie Lutkevich | 聽Staff Physician | Hawaii Health Systems Corp. | $317,400 |
Civil Beat Database of Public Employee Salaries
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About the Author
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Nathan Eagle is a deputy editor for Civil Beat. You can reach him by email at neagle@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at , Facebook and Instagram .