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Sheriff: Deputy layoffs unlikely
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Mahoning County Sheriff Randall Wellington
FACT FINDER’S REPORT OK’D
YOUNGSTOWN
By ratifying a fact finder’s report, members of the gold unit of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 141, which represents ranking officers in the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department, likely have avoided layoffs that had been proposed by the sheriff.
“I’m very proud of the union’s decision, and it should avoid the layoffs,” Sheriff Randall A. Wellington said after Tuesday’s ratification.
The sheriff had proposed last month to lay off 14 deputies, effective Dec. 26, due to an expected cut in next year’s budget.
The one-year agreement ratified 18-6 by the captains, lieutenants and sergeants belonging to the 28-member gold unit contains the same concessions as an earlier agreement by the blue unit, which represents nonranking deputies, said Charles Wilson, FOP senior staff representative.
Additionally, the gold unit agreed to eliminate overtime in 2011 and to keep vacant four ranking positions that will be vacated by retirements at the end of this year or early in 2011.
“They stepped up and got it done. They saved their membership” from layoffs, Wilson said of the gold-unit members.
In an agreement reached through a conciliation process, 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.
On Tuesday, the civilian unit, which has about a dozen members, including office staff and process servers, accepted all the concessions approved by the blue unit.
The sheriff said he expects the county commissioners to consider the gold and civilian agreements in their 10 a.m. Thursday meeting in the county-courthouse basement.
Wilson said he believes the commissioners also will have on their Thursday agenda a resolution to adopt the blue-unit concessions.
The sheriff said he did not know if Tuesday’s ratifications would enable him to run the main jail at its current level of operation because he does not yet know what his 2011 budget will be.
Eighty-five percent of the county’s main jail building at 110 Fifth Ave. is now in use, and it now houses 464 inmates, he said.
The minimum-security jail on Commerce Street is closed, except for the day-reporting inmate program, and it will remain closed to overnight use for the foreseeable future, Wellington said.
George J. Tablack, county administrator and budget director, has estimated the cost savings from the blue-unit concessions at nearly $1.5 million.
The sheriff spent $17,348,732 in 2009. His budget for this year is $15.5 million. The sheriff has 237 employees.