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Deputy concessions could lessen Christmastime layoffs
YOUNGSTOWN
Ranking officers of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department will vote Tuesday on a fact-finder’s report that could greatly reduce the number of layoffs in that department.
“It has significant concessions in it,” Charles Wilson, Fraternal Order of Police senior staff representative, said of the potential one-year agreement.
Most, but not necessarily all, of the 14 layoffs Sheriff Randall A. Wellington proposed to take effect Dec. 26 due to an expected cut in next year’s budget, could be avoided if the agreement is ratified, Wilson said.
Wilson, however, declined to publicly discuss specifics of the proposed agreement before the ranking officers belonging to the FOP’s 28-member gold unit vote on it.
The gold unit’s leadership has agreed to accept seven days’ prior notice to anyone who must be laid off, rather than the 14 days previously required, thereby enabling the sheriff to delay issuance of any furlough notices until after Tuesday’s vote, Wilson said.
The sheriff said he issued no advance layoff notices on Friday because he is awaiting the gold unit’s vote.
Glenn Kountz, president of FOP Lodge 141, which represents the gold unit and the blue unit, which consists of nonranking deputies, said he believes layoffs can be minimized if the gold-unit agreement is ratified because 10 to 15 deputies are expected to retire at the end of this year.
If a gold-unit member is to be laid off, he or she “bumps down” in rank and displaces someone with lower rank and departmental seniority, and most gold-unit members have high seniority, Kountz said.
Therefore, if layoffs occur, he said only blue-unit deputies are likely to actually be furloughed.
Blue-unit members already have approved concessions through 2011 that were achieved through a conciliation process.
George J. Tablack, county administrator and budget director, estimated cost savings from those concessions at nearly $1.5 million.
Every monetary benefit has been frozen through 2011 in the blue unit, whose members have taken a pay freeze, cut out uniform allowances and longevity pay, and agreed to be paid time-and-a-half instead of double time-and-a-half for holiday work, Koontz said.
There also will be no step increases for less- senior deputies who make $11.92 an hour, he said.
The last time anyone in the department’s blue, gold or civilian units got a raise was in 2008, Koontz said. The sheriff has 237 employees.
The sheriff spent $17,348,732 in 2009. His budget for this year is $15.5 million. He said he didn’t know next year’s figure, but it would be less than this year’s. The county commissioners have not yet adopted a 2011 budget.
As recession-induced revenue shortages linger, the county budget commission has certified next year’s general fund revenue to be $51,412,860, compared to $53,094,744 this year.
The general fund, upon which the sheriff’s department depends, is the county’s main operating fund.
Earlier this week, Tablack warned that Mahoning County’s Department of Job and Family Services may face financial hardships in the coming year with more state funding cuts possible.
The county’s JFS department will have to be prepared to react quickly if its state and federal funds — which together constitute almost all of its $24 million budget – are reduced in the middle of the current state fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2011, Tablack said.