Senator Donna Kim has proposed cuts of 121 positions and supporting general funds from the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s budget. These cuts are included in the Senate version of the state budget, which was approved by the full Senate and returned to the House this past week.
I understand that the proposed budget and position cuts would impact important research units, including the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), the UH Cancer Center, and the Department of Astronomy. These are, of course, key drivers of the university’s success at obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in outside research funding.
The cuts would likely spill over to impact the federal grants being worked on by any of those terminated as a result of Kim’s cuts.
It’s unclear when the faculty layoffs Kim proposes would go into effect. What is clear is that with the loss of the positions, these faculty could not be replaced or rehired.
In the event the Legislature were to approve Kim’s proposed cuts, it would certainly start a long and bitter legal battle in which the rest of the university faculty and administration would end up as collateral damage.
Continued accreditation of the university and its programs would quickly be called into question. Questions of academic freedom, or the lack of academic freedom, would create a large red flag that would potentially threaten outside funding to the university and its programs, and make it difficult to recruit new faculty. The implications are quite staggering.
So, first question: Is it legal?
The Hawaii State Constitution now provides that the university is a semi-autonomous organization managed by the Board of Regents.
The constitution provides, in part:
The board shall also have exclusive jurisdiction over the internal structure, management, and operation of the university. This section shall not limit the power of the legislature to enact laws of statewide concern.
Kim’s proposed micromanaging appears to go far beyond the bounds of constitutionality.
And then there’s the question of the labor contract between the University and UHPA, which represents the university faculty.
The contract has a section dealing with “retrenchment.”
Retrenchment refers to the termination of the employment of any Faculty Member during any appointment as a result of lack of work or other legitimate reason in accordance with §89-9(d), H.R.S., such as fiscal exigency; reallocation of resources; reorganization of degree or curriculum requirements; reorganization of academic or administrative structures or programs; curtailment of one (1) or more programs.
My understanding of “fiscal exigency” refers to a situation in which the state is just plumb out of money and, as a result of its financial crisis, is unable to meet its obligations under the UHPA contract.
And, if that were to occur, the contract spells out the required “order of retrenchment” as follows:
1. Part-time Faculty, including Lecturers
2. Non-tenured Faculty
3. Tenured Faculty
Kim’s targeted cuts of 121 specific faculty department seems to completely ignore these legal obligations and would leave the university’s administration in an untenable legal situation.
A legislatively-imposed set of budget and position cuts that bypass the Board of Regents in order to target specific faculty members protected by the UHPA contract would seem to be ripe for legal challenge. And what happens to the university during the years that such a challenge is working its way through the labor board and the courts?
And how is it that we’ve gotten to this point without the benefit of public debate and open scrutiny? Senator Kim should be held accountable, it appears.
After posting yesterday concerning Senator Kim’s budget cut, I edited my original version to remove this caricature of Kim drawn by John Pritchett back in 1992.
On reflection, I was worried that its inclusion would detract from the reporting about Kim’s move. So I cut it from the original post.
Now, however, I think it appropriate to share it more generally, as it shows that the image she had built a quarter-century ago pretty much sums up the way she continues to act today.
The drawing appeared in a slim volume Pritchet and I published in the months before the 1992 election. “Drawn & Quartered” featured Pritchett’s drawings of local political figures accompanied by my brief political essays. At that time, Kim was a member of the Honolulu City Council.
I wrote at that time:
“Kim has a combative, aggressive, and sometimes sarcastic style as well as a sharp tongue, often attacking those presenting public testimony or tangling with her fellow Council members.”
Not much seems to have changed.
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You had it right the first time. Leave out the caricature. Just stick with your arguments, which are excellent.
All of this is extraordinary. I’m glad that you included the caricature.
Lord knows there are scads of very high-paying administrative jobs that went to political people that do little or nothing for the actual students. Cutting jobs of specific profs, lectures and even researchers who bring their own money to the university is incredibly upsetting to me and profoundly counterproductive to the University’s goals as they exist outside of the political realm.
I hope that Senator Kim’s constituents have long memories and vote her out! Shame on her. Thank you for shining the flashlight into the dark creepy crawlie closet.
For those of us not in the know, could you please explain why Sen. Kim has such hostility toward UH Manoa? There’s obviously some history here, and knowing it would help understand her vendetta.
Thank you Carl!
Ian noted this 4 years ago:
https://www.ilind.net/2013/05/22/uh-presidents-allegation-about-senator-raises-ethics-questions/
The latest flap over UH President MRC Greenwood’s description of a conversation with Senator Donna Mercado Kim regarding her son’s application to the law school is an interesting situation.
During a lengthy interview broadcast on Monday, Greenwood told Hawaii News Now:
Last spring, probably a little earlier than now last spring, the senator called my office and she was quite upset and angry over what she considered to be the incompetence of our law school admissions people. She said they were incompetent; they were incapable of communicating what was going on over there. I said I really wouldn’t have any reason to think our law school admissions people were incompetent but I actually didn’t know on a day-to-day basis: What was her problem?
And then she lit into the fact that her son had applied to the law school and he was being strung, you know, not given information. He wasn’t hearing about what the status of his admission was, and other people had heard and she wanted to know what was going on. And I think her exact words were: If I don’t get the answers I’m expecting, you can expect to be answering these questions in front of the legislature next year. And I said, whoa whoa whoa, let’s just find out what’s going on here. I don’t really know what’s going on, give me a chance …
Kim denied making any threats, but acknowledged the phone calls, Hawaii News Now reported yesterday.
If I recall correctly, soon after her implied threats over her son’s application getting hung up, the son confessed that he actually hadn’t applied to the law school at all. I take it that she wanted him in Richardson, but he wasn’t keen on the idea himself and was trying to make it seem that they had rejected him.
BUT, her hostility to UH preceded the Great Law School Admissions Dust-up. It’s been going on for years.
Kim would best serve constituents by disclosing her process / rationale.
My vote is to keep Pritchett (size does not take away from the article).
Shame on the Senate for including and approving her proposal.
My vote is to remove the Pritchett caricature, not because it isn’t well done, but because it helps promote a side of D. Kim that legitimizes and emboldens her aggressive and hostile style of politics. To be quite honest, Kim was another run of the mill politico until Bob Rees began writing mostly positive articles about Kim’s nastiness during her city council days always attacking Jeremy Harris.
(BTW: Harris was an early supporter of Bus Rapid Transit. BRT sure looks better than the rail boondoggle we have now.)
Leave it in,as a reminder of how little things change here.
I recall that Senator Kim went ballistic at the Law School when her son wasn’t admitted, but it turned out that he hadn’t even applied. Why she keeps being re-elected is a mystery to me since her combative vindictiveness seems completely at odds with what is normally considered acceptable, local, laid-back behavior. She seems never to have grasped that one can be assertive without being strident, forceful without being rude, and rigorous without being shrill. She is sadly susceptible to personal pettiness rather than showing conviction about the correctness of her ideas. The cartoon is perfect; in these times your sensitivity while welcome is also quaint.
Voters will vote for her because they recognize her face and name and they do not look much further. It’s called being ignorant.
Has the Star-Advertiser completely missed this story?
I can’t even understand where this is coming from. I have recieved 3 communications, one from UHPA, 2 from the administrations. They are alarmed, in crisis mode even, but they too are clueless as to motivation. There is no fiscal crisis, UH is generally doing well both in research and teaching. With rising student enrollment. What I really don’t get is the cut to distance learning. This is the most succesful outreach the University does. It graduates lots of students, many of whom go on to succesful carreers, and it serves the neighbor islands as well. I had hoped that there would be motion towards lowering in state tuition.
While a political cartoon description of a prominent lawmaker in Hawaii can be seen as skewing the person, it is no secret in many circles that Sen. Kim is one that has a itchy trigger finger and has no problem using her soapbox to call out what she defines as fools. Truly put, she has had no problem calling out sacred cows for the sake of exposing what is really going on. Forget the law school issue – it is very apparent that her beef with UH is way bigger than just one incident. She has had the UH on her radar screen for years. She probably is also looking at how other Senators have taken down sacred cows in this town. I cite Sen. Glen Wakai’s attacks on the Hawaii Tourism Agency and how, I suspect, he took down George Szgenti and basically got that whole agency reformed with new leadership and, what seems now, a new direction.
We shall see if Sen. Kim has the same effect with this move by her in the Senate.
Of course, Senator Wakai went after HTA because he thought they mistreated his wife who worked there. Sorta like Senator Kim and the incident with her son and the UH law school, so not much difference there.
The caricature does come off as rather sexist because it is very much a sexualized female stereotype. It distracts from the discussion rather than informing it.