A 10.5 percent pay raise and great health care are not good enough for city’s finest

When is enough enough?

That is a question Youngstown taxpayers have a perfect right to ask after city patrol officers “overwhelmingly” rejected a fact finder’s recommendation for a new three year contract between the city and the police union.

At a time when city school teachers have recognized the financial crisis facing their institution and have agreed to a three-year wage freeze, the fact finder’s recommendation wasn’t enough for the city’s police officers.

At a time when thousands of industrial workers throughout the area have seen their jobs eliminated or their wages cut, the fact finder’s recommendation wasn’t enough.

At a time when Forum Health, the city’s second largest employer, is undergoing severe restructuring, which will doubtless affect the city’s income tax revenue, the fact finder’s recommendation
wasn’t enough.

And at time when Youngstown has the highest income tax rate of any municipality in the state — a time when prudence would dictate doing things that would reduce costs so that the income tax might be reduced — the fact finder’s recommendation wasn’t enough.

So, how bad was the fact finder’s recommendation? Did he suggest a wage freeze? Did he suggest that the patrol officers be saddled with an unreasonably high proportion of the expensive health care coverage the city provides?

No, not at all.

Given the economic situation of this area and, especially, the city of Youngstown, the wage offer was more than generous.

Healthy pay raise

The fact finder, Michael Paolucci of Cincinnati, recommended the union members receive a 3-percent raise, retroactive to Dec. 1, 2006; a 4.5-percent raise in the contract’s second year; and 3 percent in the final year.

Frankly, that’s extravagant, but Paolucci reasoned that since the city had given those same pay raises to its ranking officers union in June, he couldn’t give the patrol officers less.

That’s exactly the vicious cycle that cities — indeed, virtually all public employers — find themselves in when they submit to arbitration. No arbiter wants to be the first one who says that enough’s enough.

Paolucci addressed 25 other unresolved issues, including health-care contributions, residency, sick leave, retirement and severance, discipline and employee parking.

The parking issue is a good example of how out of whack things have become. The union claimed that moving the officers’ free parking lot two blocks from City Hall was unreasonable because it forced officers reporting for duty to carry their heavy packs those two blocks and that it was a safety issue. If officers are so out of shape that they can’t carry a briefcase or backpack a couple of blocks, and if they’re not safe walking downtown streets that the rest of us walk, something is wrong that is beyond any arbitrator’s ability to fix.

Health coverage

One of the areas of concern to the patrol officers is the fact finder’s siding with the city over an increase in the amount police officers contribute to their health care costs. The city’s current premiums are $412 a month for single coverage, $1,042 for family.

The members currently contribute 7 percent of the premium cost with a $25 monthly cap for single coverage and $50 for family coverage. The union wanted only a $5-a-month increase in the caps.

The city sought a 10-percent premium contribution, the amount nearly all full-time city employees pay, with monthly caps of $35 for single and $75 for family this year, increased to $65 and $115 next year and $80 and $150 in 2009.

The fact finder found that what the city sought is consistent with other police contracts in the state.

The union also wants at least 145 patrol officers, compared to 117 now. The city countered that there are 190 officers in the department, counting the higher ranks, and that it has more officers per capita than any comparable city.

While we would agree that the police department has become top heavy over decades and there should be more patrol officers on the streets and fewer sergeants, lieutenants and captains, we wonder if that’s what the union really wants. Do union members want to see an elimination of those jobs and the promotion opportunities to which many of them aspire?

We could get behind that. If every time a ranking officer retired, that job were eliminated and a patrol officer were added, the city would be putting more officers on the street and saving administration costs in the process.

That would be a win-win — and maybe the union should make such a proposal to city council.

As of now, the city was willing to accept the fact finder’s recommendation. The union rejected it, sending the issue to binding arbitration.

In a perfect world, the arbitrator would recognize that the fact finder had been all too fair to the union. He or she might even trim back those pay raises, recognizing that the local economic developments suggest that two or three years from now, the city is going to be hard-pressed to shoulder the additional cost.

The union, of course, is banking on the arbitrator seeking a “middle ground.” And, given the history of binding arbitration, the union is probably right.

The union will go to biding arbitration hoping to squeeze a few more dollars out of the city. And the taxpayers will be left wondering the same old question, just when enough is enough.