Keep his job, fire him, demote him, or promote him?

[CountyWorker]

Steven was not driving his county vehicle he normally drives and takes home. He was on vacation for the holidays.

Well, that’s good to hear in this case. Maybe it may have been not so good if he was not on vacation!

What is more concerning is how his poor decision is going to cost the tax payers. There is a union grievance for CDL training for employees under Department of Environmental Management as there is a shortage of drivers. They are supposed to promote within first. Now the county will have to either let him slide or have to move Doug the trainer from other department and let things fall to the side in the other department or hire an outside third party to do the training. Past practice with CDL drivers getting DUI’s was suspension without pay till they received their license back.
There are other options as far as temporarily assigning someone to his position, however there is no one available as job security was kept a priority. So ultimately his poor decisions will cost the tax payers money and county employees potential opportunities to make more money to support their families. Also, don’t forget no drivers audits for current or new hires until this debacle is addressed by Mayor Kimo Alameda.

So, what is the cause of the CDL driver shortage?

Is it a lack of qualified people to take the job, or a lack of qualified people to train, test, certify etc, or both? I have a distant thought of a room full of trained CDL drivers at the DMV in line to get their CDL license and the lady behind the counter rejecting their certified birth certificate because she can’t feel the “bumps” of the embossed seal! (Happened to me – although not for a CDL license, just my regular one!)

Or, is it a lack of management desire to spend the time required to recruit CDL drivers?

We saw this with the school bus driver issue before and now from what I think I am hearing you say, the County Department of Environmental Management has the same problem.

I am assuming County CDL drivers would be Union represented, unlike the school bus drivers, thus I would assume the wages and benefits would be fairly good, I just don’t understand this seemingly constant CDL driver shortage issue here.

Now I do understand that CDL licenses require more or less a spotless driving record as well as DOT random drug testing, so is it possible that the “sacrifice” any potential CDL driver has to make for this type of employment not worth the wages/benefits being paid?

Or is it all of the above?

At any event, welcome to PunaWeb!

[quote pid="352383" dateline="1736060941"]
From my understanding the previous Mayor Mitch Roth had failed to listen to his employees and only relied on information from his appointees of his administration. The big part of the issue was  Department Of Environmental Managements Director Ramzi Mansour as he reported directly to Mitch Roth. They were losing human resources personal at an alarming rate and this affected hiring. Currently they have no HR in environmental management and had to borrowing the previous HR specialist to help with hiring one time months ago.

Mitch Roth would always campaign saying he got funding for wastewater projects and a new treatment plant, ect. This was his job and his administration. He didn’t explain that the whole wastewater system was under administrative order of consent by the EPA and he had no choice but to do it. The administration in DEM has swept a lot of things under the rug and has tried to cover many legitimate problems up. Let alone down play and cover up illegal construction work and tax dollars used for it. 

As far as Steven goes there insinuations and rumors that the 2017 motorcycle incident were under the same circumstances as the current arrest, but had a different outcome. It does seem like he has made a lot of enemies due to his actions and temperament. I think the HTH did the story because of the irony and someone tipped them off. I heard about the incident several days after and figured it would be swept under the rug.


There are many CDL drivers who would like to work for the county. Annual pay is $70,476 or $33.88 hourly plus around 56 days paid off. Not including overtime. So the county I assume would have a lot of applicants if they were to hire. The caveat is they are supposed to be training existing employees for CDL, but now it’s at a standstill so it will affect employees and the public if a timely solution is not implemented by this new administration. 
[/quote]