{"id":11422,"date":"2025-07-15T10:38:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T10:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/11422\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T10:38:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T10:38:05","slug":"honolulu-worker-paid-not-to-work-for-nearly-five-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/11422\/","title":{"rendered":"Honolulu Worker Paid Not To Work For Nearly Five Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

The employee has been paid at least $300,000 while on leave. Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm\u2019s office won\u2019t say why its investigation has taken so long. <\/p>\n

Brandon Kaaa-Swain hasn\u2019t been to work since October 2020, but the Honolulu prosecutor\u2019s office investigator continues to collect a taxpayer-funded paycheck.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Put on paid administrative leave so officials could investigate his mileage reimbursements, Kaaa-Swain remains on leave nearly five years later, the prosecutor\u2019s office confirmed last week. <\/p>\n

Whether Kaaa-Swain is guilty of falsifying his expenses or not, a Civil Beat review found the county has now paid him at least $300,000 and counting while he\u2019s been out \u2014\u00a0about 25 times the amount he is suspected of stealing.<\/p>\n

\"HonoluluThe Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney\u2019s Office has provided no explanation for why it has paid an employee not to work for nearly five years. (Cory Lum\/Civil Beat\/2021)<\/p>\n

Ted Hong, a Hilo-based employment lawyer, said the case makes him question the competence of the department\u2019s supervisors and human resources professionals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless this involves some kind of major financial operation involving a cartel or something, it shouldn\u2019t take that long,\u201d he said. \u201cIt really is a disservice not only to the taxpayers but to all the other county employees who go by the book.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also not fair to the employee himself, Hong said, who has to endure a long running cloud of suspicion. <\/p>\n

Kaaa-Swain did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n

Civil Beat first wrote about Kaaa-Swain last year in a report about a few hundred Hawai\u02bbi employees on extended periods of paid leave<\/a> during misconduct investigations. Employees in agencies ranging from the Hawai\u02bbi Department of Education to the Department of Health have taken protracted absences from work pending investigations. <\/p>\n

Union employees are protected from at-will firings, so investigations must validate misconduct allegations before disciplinary action is taken. However, government officials say there is a lack of qualified staff to investigate claims of wrongdoing, and some cases pose difficulties due to complexity or witness availability. <\/p>\n

INVESTIGATION: Government Workers In Hawaii Get Paid Not To Work As Misconduct Investigations Drag On For Months Or Years<\/a><\/p>\n

The Hawaii Government Employees Association, the union that represents workers like Kaaa-Swain, declined to comment for this story.<\/p>\n

Kaaa-Swain\u2019s case was the most egregious example identified in Civil Beat\u2019s review of public records, and it is extreme even by national standards. Peter Jenkins, a Maryland-based attorney who has pushed for shorter periods of paid leave for federal employees, said he\u2019s never seen anyone\u2019s leave drag on that long.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Brandon Kaaa-Swain was accused of filing false mileage reports totaling over $12,000. (Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney\u2019s Office\/2020)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absurd to pay someone to not do anything for five years,\u201d said Jenkins, who works for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.<\/p>\n

Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm\u2019s chief of staff, Paul Mow, said in an email he anticipates Kaaa-Swain\u2019s case will be resolved in the next month. Asked what the holdup has been, Mow declined to comment further, noting he is prohibited from discussing a \u201csensitive HR issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy intention is to respect everyone\u2019s privacy and ensure the process is handled appropriately,\u201d Mow said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Kaaa-Swain may have even gotten a raise or two while he\u2019s been out. The pay bracket that includes his position increased twice during his leave thanks to union contract negotiations, Civil Beat\u2019s public employee salary database shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And every year that goes by is a step closer to eligibility for a lifetime of retirement benefits. <\/p>\n

The industry standard for both the private and public sector is a few months, according to Hong, the Hilo employment attorney.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can\u2019t reach the conclusion that an offense was committed, you\u2019ve got to bring them back,\u201d Hong said. \u201cIf you believe there is something there, your duty is to take some kind of action.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sign up for our FREE morning newsletter and face each day more informed.<\/p>\n

Sign Up<\/p>\n

\n Sorry. That’s an invalid e-mail.\n <\/p>\n

\n Thanks! We’ll send you a confirmation e-mail shortly.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The employee has been paid at least $300,000 while on leave. Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm\u2019s office won\u2019t say…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-11422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}