More than six months after Hawaiʻi’s Legislature approved a 20% pay raise for state public defenders, 101 attorneys have gone through 12 consecutive pay periods without seeing the increase in their paychecks, according to records obtained by Honolulu Civil Beat. Staffing shortages at the state Department of Budget and Finance — the agency responsible for processing salary adjustments for the Office of the Public Defender and six other state agencies — have stalled implementation of raises that took effect July 1.
The delay has left attorneys who represent some of the state’s most vulnerable defendants short-changed thousands of dollars and has sharpened concerns about Hawaiʻi’s ability to attract and retain public defenders, who even after the raise remain among the lowest-paid government attorneys in the state.
A Long-Running Pay Gap
The Legislature set aside $1.6 million for the raises after years in which public defender salaries fell well short of what comparable government attorneys earned. Before the raise, entry-level deputy public defenders made $75,948 — about 18% less than attorneys starting at the Attorney General’s Office and about 25% less than entry-level prosecutors in Hawaiʻi County.
Jon Ikenaga, who has led the Office of the Public Defender since 2024, said the gap drove attorneys away. “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.”
After the raise, entry-level public defenders make $91,140 — still about $2,300 less than the lowest-paid county prosecutors, because Honolulu and Maui approved separate raises for prosecutors last year as well.
A Budget Agency Running on Minimal Staff
Ikenaga alerted his staff in early August that they would not see the increase in their Aug. 5 paychecks. The Department of Budget and Finance, he wrote, was down to just one clerk in its human resources department, and that department’s new supervisor was “not fully up to speed on the paperwork process,” according to emails obtained by Civil Beat.
That single employee was responsible for all paperwork related to hiring, onboarding, pay adjustments, and separations for seven different state agencies — a workload Ikenaga later described as significant even for two people. A separate fiscal division, responsible for manually calculating retroactive pay adjustments owed to each of the 101 attorneys, was also short-staffed for months.
Just as one new employee joined the HR division, another departed, leaving the department chronically understaffed through the fall. A former official also originally miscalculated the increases for each worker, adding further delays.
It was not until October that Ikenaga was told he needed to request that the governor authorize release of the funds. Due to restrictions on certain appropriations, the amount available to cover the raises equaled $1.4 million — about $200,000 less than the Legislature had set aside — leaving his office to find money to cover the deficit.
Seth Colby, the acting finance director, said in a statement that the department has “prioritized filling the vacancies in its HR and fiscal office” and that staff from another state agency have been helping process the salary adjustments.
Lawmakers Press for Resolution
Rep. David Tarnas, chair of the House judiciary committee, said the administration’s failure to follow through was troubling. “It’s very frustrating,” Tarnas said. “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.”
Ikenaga told staff in a Nov. 26 email that he and assistant public defender Hayley Cheng were “also extremely frustrated” by the delay. “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,” he wrote.
After assuring staff in November that raises would appear in their Dec. 20 or Jan. 5 paychecks, Ikenaga sent a Dec. 31 email informing them the raises had still not been entered into the payroll system, with no estimated date for when they would be.
Neighbor Island Offices Felt the Shortage Most Acutely
The staffing crisis has played out against a broader attorney shortage across the state. 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 courts to rely on a small pool of court-appointed private attorneys. The office recently hired another attorney, bringing its total to five with one position still vacant, and has since resumed taking those cases.
To address the statewide shortage, 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. Ikenaga said the program has helped reduce vacancies, with nearly all neighbor-island positions now filled.
Public defenders’ pay had been stagnant for at least a decade, Ikenaga said, and even with the raise they remain among the lowest-paid government attorneys in the state.
What Comes Next
The Department of Budget and Finance’s fiscal office is now fully staffed, and the HR office is down to one vacancy, Colby said. Ikenaga told staff this week that increased paychecks are expected to begin in February. He cautioned that the timing may vary among attorneys and that there could be a two-to-four week lag even after salaries are entered in the payroll system.
Ikenaga said his staff have continued working on behalf of their clients throughout the delay. “The attorneys,” he said, “have always been willing to make sacrifices.”
This story was originally reported by Caitlin Thompson of Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.