Would we expect anything else?

[Mac2017]

http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/2018/01/2...th-raises/

[lquade]

yep, the way of government universally: reward bad behavior. at least the raises were not in the double digits like all the others...

[SBH]

Shouldn’t the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency also get raises for all the worldwide publicity they gave Hawaii on the 13th?

[glinda]

I think it's sad when people belittle others getting raises. And to bitch about government employees getting raises is complete BS. Folks that do so are (imo) very small minded, petty.

[MarkD]

They are all special and deserving of more. Just like the HGEA ads tell us. "Give the union a shaka."

(How about a finger? The middle one.)

[Mac2017]

I always find it interesting how people think. I thought people who get raises do so because they do a good job? Please explain to me how a substandard employees deserves a raise? Please explain to us how these people earned a raise due to their exceptional standards of their job classification . Please explain to the rest of us why we are small minded and petty since we expect the employees who we pay for to do their job to at least a minimum standard. Enlighten the simple minded people like me.

[randomq]

Glinda, seriously? Half the wells failed and water restrictions for a year! What would they have to do to *not* deserve a raise, in your eyes?

Who's next, the top brass at Hele-On?

[Mac2017]

I'm waiting...........

[geochem]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mac2017

Please explain to the rest of us why we are small minded and petty since we expect the employees who we pay for to do their job to at least a minimum standard. Enlighten the simple minded people like me.

---

Let me make a start on that by suggesting to you the adage: "you get what you pay for"... How do the pay rates for County and State positions stack up against what can be had in the private sector? What would a senior engineer at, say, SSFM or another private firm be making compared to the County positions - 50% higher salary? 100%? 200%. Do the private sector engineers have the same impediments obstructing their path to project completion (masses of paperwork; almost complete absence of competent support staff (over which they have no disciplinary authority because they are UNION); endless bean counting oversight and demands for justification; and these aren't half the list...) as are routinely imposed on the County and State engineers? (and I'll only briefly mention in passing, the constant criticism and second guessing by a mass of whiners who couldn't competently complete one day in the County and State positions that these people occupy).

All too often I've seen people hired more on the basis of who will accept a non-competitive salary rather than who the best candidate for the job would have been from the applicants. You may legitimately ask "why do these people take the jobs" - I'd answer that there are a host of reasons specific to the individual: family here in Hawaii; dedication to public service; too few opportunities in their specialties in the private sector; unwillingness to deal with the competitive nature of the private sector; and, I'm sure that some simply aren't willing to put in the effort and hard work to be competitive and are willing to put up with the low pay and BS that comes with the job.

And so you have pumps that fail - they were provided by the low bidder, after all - that may not have been adequately tested by the field tech (who's union, and so you can't even scold him for being a slacker) and it takes a year to get it repaired because you have to have your contract specialist (who may or may not be half brain-dead or drug impaired - but you can't test him, or even fire him if you could...) write up 50 pages of specifications for repair of a piece of equipment that s/he doesn't understand - and then, once the bids come in, you have to justify why you want to have the pump manufacturer do the repair rather than Pecksniff's Pumps and Patches who has bid $20 less than the original supplier (I once submitted a sole-source justification that ran more than 100 pages...).

And, looking beyond the county, you have crappy user-interfaces that practically beg you to send out false alarms (there's that low bidder again... - I'd expect a better UI from a high-school coder). And you can't send out a correction to the alert because there are sixty pages of SOP that you need to wade through to see who is authorized to issue corrections to an alert...

So yes, the system is broken - but the blame, and the penalty shouldn't necessarily go to the department heads who may be the only competent individuals in the agency - in part because their deputies are all too often failed politicians who couldn't make the grade... but if your agency wants to get the funds it needs, your party hack is the only bird with the right feathers...

But you keep electing the same politicians year after year after year - who allow this broken system to perpetuate. So, if you're looking for someone to blame, I'd guess you might have a better than 50% chance of finding a candidate in the mirror...

eta grammer

[Mac2017]

That's a well articulated response that I can respect. U certainly gave me something to think about. I would only respond by adding substandard employees in the private sector are terminated not promoted or given raises.