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Fact finder rules in deputies' wage request
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A fact finder with the State Employee Relations Board has recommended members of the Fraternal Order of Police union, which represents deputies and others at the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office, not receive the 3 percent salary increases they were seeking.
Instead, fact finder Sandra Mendel Furman recommended that deputies in the blue unit and civilian employees receive wage increases of 1.5 percent retroactive to 2014 and also for 2015.
The recommendation came after a hearing Sept. 3 at the sheriff’s office. According to the fact finder’s report, the union was seeking a 3 percent increase in both 2014 and 2015, citing improving county finances and the fact that employees had taken wage freezes without any kind of increase for years, along with other concessions; and to bring them up to the level of pay deputies in similar counties have.
County officials objected to the raises, contending deficits are projected for fiscal years 2015 and 2016, although there is a projected $3.2 million carryover for 2014.
Audrey Tillis, county budget director, said the union reopened the contract earlier this year. The contract runs until July 1, 2016.
Tillis said the recommendation already has been rejected by the union, so the matter will now move on to a conciliator. Because it was rejected by the union, the county commissioners do not have to take any action, Tillis said.
Mendel Furman’s report noted that deputies have taken a wage freeze since 2010, when wages returned to pre-2008 levels, and that there is a 22 percent disparity in wages between Mahoning’s deputies and deputies in departments similar to Mahoning’s.
The report also noted that the union’s increases, if they were accepted, would cost the county an additional $700,000.
Mendel Furman said she recommended the 1.5 percent increases because of the length of time union members have gone without a wage increase. She also wrote that 1.5 percent was the average increase in 2013 for police and other similar units in the Youngstown-Warren area.
Although voters recently approved a 0.25 percent sales-tax increase to be used exclusively for the county’s safety forces, Mendel Furman said she did not take that into account when she made her decision because it was not known if the tax would pass, and she could not base her decision on an unknown factor. She said there is enough money in the county’s carryover to pay for the increase.
Mendel Furman’s opinion was released last week, but it does not say when the decision was reached. A message for SERB was not returned. Mendel Furman refused to say when it was written when reached by phone Monday.