Public Defenders Got 20% Raises, But Hawaiʻi Isn’t Paying Them
(ASSOCIATED PRESS) – AP reports that an effort to address Hawaii’s shortage of public defenders by increasing their salaries has stalled because the state agency responsible for managing their pay is also understaffed. More than six months after a 20% pay raise went into effect, attorneys’ paychecks are still short.
Last year, the Legislature set aside $1.6 million to increase public defender salaries, which for years have been out of whack with what their counterparts in county prosecutors’ offices and the Department of the Attorney General make.
But severe staffing shortages at the state Department of Budget and Finance, the agency in charge of human resources and fiscal management for the Office of the Public Defender and six other state agencies, have caused delays, according to records obtained by Civil Beat.
Now, public defenders’ paychecks have fallen short for about 12 straight pay periods, leaving attorneys who represent some of the state’s most vulnerable and high-need defendants short-changed thousands of dollars. While staff will eventually be paid for what they should have been earning since the raise went into effect, the original timelines for when they’d see the money they’re owed — and the additional pay in their bimonthly checks — have come and gone.
Public defenders and lawmakers who supported the raise are getting fed up waiting.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Rep. David Tarnas, chair of the House judiciary committee, pointing out that lawmakers had taken care of their part of the process. “The fact that the administration has not followed through on that is troubling, and I’m not happy with it, and I want this to be resolved.”
‘The Raises Were Essential’
Public defenders have long been at a disadvantage in terms of pay and staffing compared to their counterparts on the other side of the courtroom.
The salary for entry-level deputy public defenders before the raise was $75,948 — about 18% lower than the starting salary at the Attorney General’s Office and about 25% lower than the entry-level pay at the prosecutor’s office in Hawaiʻi County.
That has made it hard to entice people to work as a deputy public defender, said Jon Ikenaga, who has led the office since 2024.
The disparity was so significant that Ikenaga said it was driving government attorneys to take positions at different agencies or leave the public defender’s office.
“They want to stay in public defense work,” Ikenaga said. “Sometimes the economy of it doesn’t make sense, so they’re forced to make choices that they normally wouldn’t because of the pay disparity.”
The raises were essential, he said, for being able to hire needed attorneys.
This has been particularly true for neighbor islands. The Kailua-Kona Public Defender’s Office on the Big Island was, at one point, so short-staffed that attorneys stopped representing clients charged with DUIs and some felonies, forcing the court to rely on a small pool of court-appointed private attorneys. The office recently hired another attorney, bringing the total to five with another position still vacant. They have since resumed taking DUIs and felonies.
To address a statewide shortage of attorneys, the state Supreme Court last year launched a pilot program allowing lawyers from other states to work in Hawaiʻi without first taking the local bar. It has helped reduce vacancies, Ikenaga said. Almost all vacancies on neighbor islands are now filled.
But the low pay has continued to impact morale. Public defenders’ pay had been stagnant for at least a decade, Ikenaga said. Even after the raise, they are still among the lowest-paid government attorneys in the state, in part because Honolulu and Maui both approved pay raises for prosecutors last year as well.
Entry-level public defenders now make $91,140 – still about $2,300 short of the lowest-paid county prosecutors.
State Budget Agency Staffing Shortage Causes Delays
Leadership at the budget and finance department argued in favor of the raise for public defenders, but staffing shortages at the agency have caused delays in actually implementing it, according to emails between the public defender and his staff and obtained by Civil Beat.
About a month after the raise went into effect on July 1, Ikenaga wrote to his staff alerting them that they wouldn’t see the increase in their Aug. 5 paychecks, according to the emails. The Department of Budget and Finance, he said, was down to just one clerk in the human resources department and the new supervisor “is not fully up to speed on the paperwork process.”
That left a single employee responsible for all the paperwork related to hiring, onboarding new employees, pay adjustments and separation for seven different agencies, Ikenaga wrote.
Ikenaga assured the attorneys on his staff that they would receive retroactive checks to cover the difference between what they received and what they were owed after the raise went into effect.
Over the next several months, emails show that Ikenaga and his deputy were in frequent contact with the budget and finance department about when the raises would be finally implemented, with little progress.
Just as a new employee joined the human resources division, another left, leaving the department continually short-staffed. The division is responsible for putting salary adjustments into the payroll system. It’s a tedious process that must be completed for each of the 101 attorneys. It would be a significant amount of work for two people, let alone a single worker, Ikenaga told his team in a Sept. 4 email.
The department was also missing workers in its fiscal division, which handles inputting retroactive adjustments, leaving one person to manually calculate what each person is owed.
The budget and finance department has “prioritized filling the vacancies in its HR and fiscal office,” Seth Colby, the acting finance director, said in a statement emailed to Civil Beat. He said staff at another state department have been helping process the salary adjustments. But so far, attorneys are still waiting.
There were other hiccups, according to the emails between the public defender and his staff. A former budget and finance official originally miscalculated the increases for each worker. Ikenaga was repeatedly asked to submit lists of his deputy public defenders and their adjusted salaries to try to expedite the process.
It wasn’t until October that Ikenaga said he was told he needed to request that the governor authorize the release of the funds. And due to the governor’s restrictions on certain appropriations, the amount his office would get to cover the raises actually equaled $1.4 million — about $200,000 shy of what they’d been promised — forcing his department to find the money to cover the deficit.
Ikenaga told employees that he and assistant public defender Hayley Cheng are “also extremely frustrated” by the delay.
“Hayley and I know how important these raises are to all of you and your families,” he wrote in a Nov. 26 email. “These raises were not a luxury, they were a long-overdue necessity to ensure that you were fairly compensated for all the hard work and sacrifices you make on a daily basis.”
“I am so sorry for this extended and frustrating delay. Please understand that we have never stopped working on this issue,” he added.
On Nov. 26, Ikenaga sent an email informing his staff that they could likely expect to see their increases reflected in their Dec. 20 or Jan. 5 paychecks. Instead, staff received an email from Ikenaga on Dec. 31 informing them that their raises still had not been entered into the system, and there was no estimated date for when they would be.
Ikenaga said he and his deputy would “continue to harangue and pressure” budget and finance. “Many of you have, justifiably, relied upon the pay increases in making financial plans and that the delay is causing anger, frustration and hardship and I am very sorry,” he wrote.
The staffing issues causing the delay have gotten better. Budget and finance’s fiscal office is now fully staffed, and the HR office is down to one vacancy, Colby said. The department’s leadership promised the public defender’s office that they were prioritizing processing the attorneys’ raises.
Earlier this week, Ikenaga told his staff that the increased paychecks are expected to start in February. But it’s still not a hard and fast timeline. Ikenaga also warned that some people may see raises reflected in their paychecks sooner than others and that even after their salaries were adjusted in the payroll system, there might be a two or four-week lag before they actually see the money.
Still, Ikenaga says his staff have continued to work hard on behalf of their clients.
“The attorneys,” he said, “have always been willing to make sacrifices.”
