As Honolulu gears up to begin construction on an elevated commuter rail line, one of the early tasks is to find 44 new full-time employees to help manage the city's nascent Rapid Transit Division.

The proposed new rail jobs come with an average salary of nearly $85,000 plus benefits.

The 44 jobs include one full-time executive assistant position that pays $148,764 a year and five additional executive assistant positions that have an average annual salary of $129,636, according to Mayor Mufi Hannemann's budget request.

The rail jobs will be some of the highest-paying posts at Honolulu Hale, where the mayor earns $136,428 a year, City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle makes $129,312 a year and city department heads make $118,344 year.

The city says the high wages are needed to attract competent candidates to work on the train project. Still, the salary levels and the city's planned hiring pace concerns at least one council member.

"Even those who voted in favor of transit (in November), I don't think they were voting to approve a very large, a very expensive and very permanent bureaucracy," said City Council member Duke Bainum. "If you're starting at that (wage level), imagine where they're going to be five, 10 years down the line when you have these built-in raises."

Officials want to begin construction on the steel-wheel train in December and launch service between 2013 and 2019. However, the project still needs to overcome several hurdles including federal approval of the project's environmental impact statement, federal approval of more than $1 billion in grants (expected in 2011) and a recession that's reduced near-term tax revenues for the project.

Growth in the city's new Rapid Transit Division comes at a time when other city agencies are shaving costs and keeping salaries level in an effort to keep the budget balanced. The Rapid Transit Division is immune from those problems because its operations are funded by a half-cent surcharge to the general excise tax. That has raised nearly $324 million for the city since January 2007.

City officials hope to use the tax to raise nearly $4.1 billion, on an inflation-adjusted basis, from 2007 through 2022 to pay for the 20-mile rail system linking East Kapolei to Ala Moana. That, coupled with about $1.4 billion in anticipated federal money, is expected to pay the estimated $5.4 billion in capital costs associated with rail, according to the city's financial plan.

BUDGET DEADLINE

Under the Hannemann administration's current budget proposal, the city's Rapid Transit Division will augment its 35 currently authorized staff positions and $2.7 million in salaries with another 44 positions and an added $4.2 million in salaries. The new positions include a host of technical, planning and architectural jobs. They also include an information officer job that pays $92,400 a year and an information specialist position that pays $82,128 a year.

The City Council has until June 15 to complete the budget, including the new transit positions.

Some of the new positions will be filled by people who currently work on the project, but are employed by city transit contractor Scottsdale, Ariz.-based InfraConsult LLC.

Last year the Rapid Transit Division was authorized to fill 35 jobs. They included two executive assistant jobs paying an average salary of $108,372, a $126,516 deputy director job, and an $87,108 public communications administrator job.

City transportation Director Wayne Yoshioka defended the salaries at a recent meeting with members of the City Council.

"As we go out and look for qualified individuals to fill various positions within the Rapid Transit Division we're looking for some very specialized skills," Yoshioka said at the budget briefing. "Often times these are fairly highly compensated individuals right now that we're trying to get to come over to work within our division."