The police department, where access to overtime is also leading to an increase in early retirements, accounted for 60% of pension spiking costs in the last seven years.

Public pension spiking fueled by Honolulu employee overtime has cost taxpayers a quarter of a billion dollars over the last seven years, based on department-by-department data the county provided to Civil Beat.

Spiking hit an all-time high of $46 million after the pandemic began, in fiscal year 2022, but continued to burden taxpayers last year with $35 million in costs. That’s more than double pre-pandemic spiking costs and larger than the entire annual budgets of some county departments.

“It’s unfortunate, and it’s improper,” Thomas Williams, executive director of the Hawaiʻi Employee Retirement System, told Civil Beat.

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