Despite concentrated lobbying by county officials, lawmakers are still seriously considering overriding Gov. Linda Lingle's veto of a bill that would require negotiation with public worker unions over matters such as transfers, promotions and layoffs.

Senate leaders last night said the Senate is considering overriding that veto and vetoes of five other bills. House leaders had not yet decided whether they would also attempt an override of the public-worker bill.

Lawmakers have until Thursday to decide whether to override the governor's veto on that and other bills, including measures dealing with the appointment of regents and how legislative or U.S. Senate vacancies are filled.

Senate Bill 1642, the "permissive bargaining bill," has drawn significant attention during the past week as the counties have sent their public safety officials and department heads out to canvass the Capitol and spread their assertion that if the veto does not stand, emergency services and responses to sewage spills, road repair and drinking water contamination could be delayed.

House Majority Leader Kirk Caldwell, however, insisted no lawmaker would want to pass a bill that would jeopardize public safety.

He maintains that the bill would simply correct a 2005 Hawai'i Supreme Court decision that said the city had the authority to transfer union members to different locations without negotiation.

According to the Hawaii Government Employees Association, the decision addresses much more than transfers and could invalidate existing contracts.

Everyone agrees that they don't want a repeat of a Pearl City situation, in which 13 idle refuse workers got paid to do nothing for years while the United Public Workers union fought their transfer to the understaffed Honolulu baseyard — which led to the Supreme Court case and this bill.

However, there's no agreement on how to prevent it.

Nora Nomura, legislative officer for HGEA, said the bill should pass to protect the language currently in the contracts. The union's concern is a sentence in the high court opinion that says management's rights supersede collective bargaining agreements.

"That's the sentence that has caused all this trouble," she said.

Caldwell said the bill is intended to correct this perceived imbalance by making sure that unions can bringing problematic issues to the table. "There have been cases where they can't even bring it up," he said.

The bill, Nomura said, would just raise the issue of negotiation, but both sides need to be willing to come to the table for bargaining to occur. "They don't have to agree," she said.

While some have criticized lawmakers for trying to overturn a high court decision, Caldwell said that it's all part of checks and balances and the Legislature isn't overstepping its boundaries.

However, according to city Customer Services Director Jeff Coelho, the bill would give too much power to the unions. "They're shifting the balance of who exactly is responsible for running the city," he said.

But Nomura said it wouldn't change anything, but rather would protect what already exists, such as the procedures in the collective bargaining agreements that govern promotions, transfers and layoffs.

Without a law, she said, union members would be unable to prevail in grievances because the managers' rights would supersede theirs.

The management issue is similarly narrowly focused on a just few words in the Senate bill, particularly a change that says the measure "shall not preclude negotiations" over a variety of personnel matters. City officials have taken that to mean that every individual transfer would have to be negotiated, including temporary ones in the case of an emergency.

"This bill was put together and crafted artistically by people who know where they want it to go," said city Refuse Chief Frank Doyle. "It's almost a death knell for management."

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.