Office of Hawaiian Affairs CEO Stacy Ferreira, who was placed on indefinite leave in September, could see her pay jump 35%—to $270,400 — next month under a proposal up for consideration by the office’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday.

The pay raise has been a long time coming, trustees have said, because she’s gone two years without a pay raise and other top positions at OHA currently earn more than her. The proposal would set the base salary for the CEO position going forward. The trustees debated raising the position’s pay earlier this year but deferred the matter.

Ferreira has been out since Sept. 23 when the OHA Board of Trustees voted to put her on paid leave. In a message to staff, she said she was taking personal leave, but follow-up messages from Board Chair Kai Kahele described it as administrative leave. The circumstances surrounding her departure are still unclear; trustees and others have said that Ferreira didn’t give a reason for leaving suddenly and hasn’t indicated when she would come back to the job.

The nine-member Board of Trustees that oversees OHA was scheduled to take up a smaller pay raise for Ferreira earlier this month. Under that proposal, the CEO’s pay would have gone up to $206,000, putting it in line with the pay of directors of most state departments, which were approved by the state Salary Commission earlier this year. 

Ferreira’s contract ties increases in pay to those set by the Salary Commission. But at its Oct. 2 meeting, the board agreed that pay raises shouldn’t be tied to the commission. 

“Clearly, we shouldn’t have this language in the contract,” Kahele said during the meeting. “That was a mistake.”

State law requires the board to set the administrator’s salary. The board directed Trustee Luana Alapa, who leads the board’s finance committee, to come up with a new pay proposal during its Oct. 2 meeting.

Ferreira earns $200,000 a year. Under the new proposal, Ferreira’s pay would first go up to $260,000 retroactive to Nov. 1, 2024 through Oct. 31 of this year.

Then, her pay would go up again to $270,400 on Nov. 1.

The big pay bump would align the salary with those of other top positions at OHA, according to the proposal. The trustees approved pay raises during the office’s latest budget cycle in June. The chief financial officer and real estate manager now earn $250,000, while OHA’s investments manager earns $300,000.

The CEO’s current salary of $200,000 “is grossly misaligned and lacks equity with the other members of the executive team which the administrator supervises,” the proposal prepared by Alapa’s office said.

OHA was created in 1978 to improve the conditions of Native Hawaiians. The CEO is responsible for developing and advocating for policies to accomplish that mission, overseeing a $600 million investment portfolio and land holdings across the state, lobbying the Legislature and providing various services to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries.

The proposal argues that the tasks are less like a state director with a more narrow mission and more akin to the executives of Hawaiʻi’s large Native Hawaiian-serving organizations like Kamehameha Schools, which has an endowment worth nearly $15 billion, and the Liliʻuokalani Trust.

Alapa’s proposal compares Ferreira’s current salary with that of the other organizations. Kamehameha CEO Jack Wong earned more than $1 million last year, according to tax records. The former president of the Liliʻuokalani Trust, Dawn Harflinger, earned more than $500,000 annually. The trust, created to help orphaned and destitute children, has assets with a fair market value of $1 billion and 182 employees.

OHA has land holdings across the state, including commercial property in Iwilei as well as the controversial Kakaʻako Makai properties and an investment portfolio — the Native Hawaiian Trust Fund — valued at nearly $600 million. 

The new CEO salary is “conservative versus peer Native Hawaiian Trusts and positions bearing similar risk and scope,” the proposal said. “However, it brings OHA into a more competitive compensation zone and sends a signal of professionalism and credibility.”

Ferreira is entering the last year of her three-year contract and hasn’t seen a pay increase since taking over as head of the organization in late 2023.

The trustees appointed the board’s chief of staff, Summer Sylva, to fill in on an interim basis in September. Her salary wouldn’t be affected by the pay increase proposal, OHA spokesman Bill Brennan said.

The salary for Sylva’s position is set at $170,000, according to OHA’s most recent budget. She was given a 10% raise when she stepped into the temporary CEO role in September, according to Brennan.

On Wednesday, the trustees will also be asked to reallocate $209,924 to cover the pay increases. If the proposal clears the Budget and Finance Committee, it would still need approval from the full board a later date.