Money For New State Fire Marshal Isn’t Nearly Enough, Fire Council Says
The State Fire Council will recommend spending far more than the Legislature has approved for the new office.
Hawaii’s State Fire Council says lawmakers need to invest from $1 million to $4 million to revive the Office of the State Fire Marshal 鈥 up to 23 times more than the $172,000 legislators have allocated for the office so far.
Fire officials have repeatedly said the office could address the enduring shortcomings in Hawaii鈥檚 fire prevention and safety practices in light of the 2023 Maui wildfires. The state has not had a fire marshal since 1979 when lawmakers disbanded the office, citing an overlap in duties with county departments.
But the appropriation the Legislature approved last session for the office, which includes salaries for the marshal, an assistant and office supplies, falls short of the resources that would be needed to handle a list of duties .
The fire council will finalize those recommendations Friday before sending them to the Legislature for review ahead of the 2025 session.
They call for the marshal to focus on fire prevention by regulating building safety and fire safety standards, guiding the state鈥檚 wildfire prevention and education efforts, developing regulations and coordinating state agencies.
Legislators allocated $172,000 to revive the office as part of , enacted in July. The state’s fire chiefs and other fire officials have said the funding is too low to stand up an office, let alone hire a fire marshal to build the agency from the ground up.
Hawaii County Fire Chief Kazuo Todd, chair of the fire council, said he suspects the money was intended as a stopgap measure to give lawmakers an idea of what an office should look like and what funding it should get.
But the government hiring process is slow. In fact, the job has not been advertised yet.
The legislative funding is nevertheless hard to reconcile for Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization co-executive director Elizabeth Pickett, especially following the Maui fires that killed 102 people and destroyed more than 2,200 structures last year, costing the state and federal governments billions of dollars.
The nonprofit organization was founded 23 years ago by former state wildland firefighters to help communities protect themselves from wildfires.
鈥淲e just ponied up billions of dollars, but we can鈥檛 scrounge up more than $170,000 to make sure it doesn鈥檛 happen again? This is about our priorities as a state,鈥 Pickett said.
The Act 209 appropriation included $120,000 for the marshal鈥檚 salary, a pay level county fire captains might expect to receive but not what a high-level executive fire officer would typically earn.
Honolulu Fire Chief Sheldon Hao is paid at least $224,304, the Big Island’s Todd makes $194,400 and Maui County Fire Chief Brad Ventura gets $183,889.
State fire marshals’ salaries are typically within about 15% of big city department chiefs’ income, said Butch Browning, executive director of the National Association of State Fire Marshals. The current proposed salary is “extremely low,” he said.
The fire council鈥檚 draft job description calls for a bachelor鈥檚 degree and five years of experience as a fire chief or deputy fire marshal. Among the desirable qualifications is a list of specific fire certifications and a postgraduate degree.
Starting Out ‘On The Low End’
The $120,000 salary is in line with what the fire council , according to a summary of the council’s wildfire mitigation proposals from December.
Todd said not much thought went into the $120,000 recommendation, but acknowledged “the goal was to come in on the low end.”
Two phases of the attorney general’s have come out since the council made its proposals. Each phase has highlighted shortcomings and gaps that a fire marshal could address, widening the position’s scope of responsibility, after the legislation was already passed.
“That’s why we come back for session every year, so we can confirm what it is that we want the fire marshal to do,” said Rep. Linda Ichiyama, who co-chaired last year’s House Wildfire Prevention Working Group.
The council, which will appoint the fire marshal, has meanwhile reached out to several possible candidates informally with little success, members said in a late October meeting.
“We are banking on this person to be the solution to a lot of issues but not really offering the salary that would be commensurate with expectations,” Todd said.
The council is now proposing $150,000 as a more appropriate salary in its draft report to the Legislature, Todd said.
Meanwhile, there is discussion over whether the marshal’s office should fall under the governor’s office or the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.
“We’re flying the plane as we’re building it,” Todd said.
The fire council last month approved the possibility of making a temporary hire for the position, though Todd doubts it’s practical given the marshal will have to organize an entirely new office.
Hawaii鈥檚 executive branch has suggested temporarily turning to the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife and the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization to implement more immediate fire mitigation measures.
Pickett said that might be appropriate, given the immediate need for the state to bolster fire safety and wildfire prevention.
And it would buy time for the state to figure out the marshal鈥檚 final role and how to fund it, Pickett said.
Three Models For Staffing Suggested
As the only state without a fire marshal, Hawaii has 49 potential blueprints it could look at. Some states make the marshal’s office a stand-alone agency, while others place marshals under departments like the state police.
The fire council suggests three possible office structures, all under the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.
They include a fully staffed office costing $3.98 million with 42 administrative, operations and training staff members, a middle-level model with 23 workers costing $2.27 million and a smaller-staff model with 14 employees costing $1.36 million.
In comparison, Oregon allocated its state fire marshal’s office just over $92 million in after it elevated the office to the level of a state agency last year.
The fire council suggests allocating an additional $500,000 to the state fire marshal’s office once it’s set up, so it can hire consultants to help the office understand the cost implications associated with implementing everything laid out in Act 209.
Once that picture becomes clearer, the state could then think about creating sustainable funding channels for the the office, Browning of the National Association of State Fire Marshals said.
States typically pay for their fire marshals through permanent funding lines, akin to the state police. Once a state fire marshal is installed, the office might also be eligible for federal funding opportunities for fire safety programs.
Some states have added a 1%-2% tax onto insurance premiums to help fund the marshals’ offices, Browning said.
Civil Beat鈥檚 coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.
