Hawaii's largest public-sector union is pushing back against a state plan that would split the nearly 300-member sheriff's deputy corps into two pay tracks, giving roughly 60% of them an 8% raise while leaving deputies who guard state courthouses without the bump. The Hawaii Government Employees Association says the move could deepen a recruitment and retention crisis that has already left the Department of Law Enforcement scrambling to fill badges.
What the Reclassification Would Do
Under the proposal, deputies working in patrol, airport, harbor, fugitive, canine, training and criminal investigation units would be renamed State Law Enforcement Officers and would receive the 8% pay increase, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Deputies assigned to state courthouses, meanwhile, would keep the Sheriff's Deputy title but would not get the raise. The newspaper notes that court deputies protect judges, jurors, witnesses and the public, a role union leadership says deserves equal footing with other assignments.
HGEA Executive Director Randy Perreira called the unilateral reclassification by the state Department of Human Resources Development shortsighted, warning it would worsen an already difficult staffing shortage, per the same report. Perreira said pay increases should instead be negotiated for all deputies to improve competitiveness across the board, and argued the state should retain its current staff rather than limit compensation for sheriff's deputies working in the judiciary.
A Pay Fight With a History
This isn't the union's first attempt to raise deputy pay. HGEA had petitioned the state back in 2022 with a plan centered on eliminating vacant funded positions the state would realistically never fill, redirecting that money toward deputies' salaries instead. The Star-Advertiser's report notes that the plan HGEA and the state believed they had agreed on was never carried out.
The dispute over pay now extends into formal labor proceedings. HGEA reached an impasse with the state over a new sheriff's deputies contract that was supposed to take effect July 1, 2025, and an arbitration hearing on the stalled matter is scheduled for Dec. 14 through Dec. 18. DLE Director Jared K. Redulla said his agency is aware of the issue and is handling it internally, the Star-Advertiser reported.
The Pay Gap Behind the Tension
Numbers help explain why the union is digging in. A starting Hawaii Department of Law Enforcement Sheriff Division employee earns $60,024 a year after completing training, compared with $69,552 for a cadet at the Honolulu Police Department's Ke Kula Makai training academy, who can earn up to $77,456 annually by meeting specified conduct standards, according to the same Star-Advertiser account. DLE Director Mike Lambert has separately said state sheriffs make about $20,000 a year less than county police officers, as reported by Honolulu Civil Beat, which found experienced deputy sheriffs earning between $60,000 and $89,000 in its salary database.
Civil Beat also reported that most members of the state police union are set to receive a 27% salary increase over four years, with Honolulu police officers at seven years of service scheduled to see pay climb from $89,736 to $108,036 by July 2028. Lambert has said his agency may pursue a parity bill offering a $15,000 annual flat match that would bring salaries to $70,000, according to Hawai‘i Public Radio, which reported low pay as a primary concern amid a 28% vacancy rate among DLE sheriff and investigator positions. Lambert has also described his agency's vacancy rate as 27% in comments to Civil Beat; the two figures come from different reports and the underlying discrepancy is not explained in either account.
A Staffing Problem Bigger Than One Department
The vacancy crunch isn't unique to Hawaii's sheriffs. The Star-Advertiser's reporting points to a 2024 survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police of 1,158 police departments nationwide, in which more than 70% of respondents said recruitment is harder now than it was five years earlier. Honolulu Police Department's own vacancy rate hovered around 20% in the year covered by Civil Beat's report, up from about 15% in 2021.
There have been bright spots. The Department of Law Enforcement swore in 18 new deputy sheriffs on Sept. 30, which Kaua‘i Now described as the agency's largest graduating recruit class since it became a separate state agency nearly two years earlier. Most of those new deputies were assigned to state courthouses and Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu, according to Kaua‘i Now.
The state has also found other ways to put deputies to work. The state Department of Transportation committed $2 million in federal highway-safety funding to cover overtime for deputies on traffic enforcement, a program that started with two five-officer teams on Oʻahu, Civil Beat reported separately. Whether that kind of targeted funding could extend to closing the broader pay gap remains an open question as the reclassification fight and the stalled contract both head toward resolution in the coming weeks.
