The need to establish hiring standards for the city’s head of emergency management, who is in charge of preparing for and coordinating responses to disasters like fires, hurricanes and floods, will be on the ballot in November.

The position faced extra scrutiny in the aftermath of last year’s fires on Maui that killed 102 people. The loss of life – and the reverberating negative effects on those who survived – helped highlight the importance of having qualified people in charge of emergency management.

Currently, the City Charter does not establish minimum qualifications for the position on Oahu, which is appointed by the mayor. The question on the ballot is whether minimum qualifications should be implemented.

Those qualifications would include possessing at least five years of experience at the administrative level in emergency management, disaster planning or public safety services management, where at least two of those years include supervising emergency management or homeland security activities or both.

The city’s Department of Human Resources would be able to determine its own additional qualifications, which would avoid having to undertake another lengthy process to change the City Charter if more qualifications are thought of later.

UPDATE: The measure also would establish the Department of Emergency Management as an independent agency under the city’s executive branch, specifying that the director and deputy director are subject to civil service laws. It also would put the Citizens Advisory Commission on Civil Defense, which advises the department, under the department’s purview.

During hearings on whether to put the question on the ballot, council members emphasized that they did not think Honolulu’s director at the time, Hiro Toiya, was not qualified. They just wanted to make sure that future directors would be qualified too.

Council member Matt Weyer said the decision to introduce this charter amendment also wasn’t intended as a critique of any other jurisdiction, even though the spotlight was on Maui County when he and council Chair Tommy Waters introduced it last September.

“When we looked at our charter and we saw that minimum qualifications already existed for other directors, it seemed appropriate to have those for our emergency management director as well, just given the weight of the responsibility to maintain public safety,” Weyer said. Similar minimum qualifications already exist for the heads of Honolulu’s police, fire and emergency services departments. 

Shortly after the Aug. 8, 2023, fires, Civil Beat reported that Maui Emergency Management Agency director Herman Andaya had no formal education in emergency management or response before being appointed to lead MEMA. A day later, he resigned.

On Sept. 28, Toiya left the city for the Federal Emergency Management Administration and was replaced at the helm by his deputy director Jennifer Walter, who worked in emergency management for years with the American Red Cross before joining the state’s emergency management team, then the city. 

She will serve as acting director until a new permanent director is chosen.