Youngstown’s fiscal crisis dictates spending controls
After years of harshly criticizing fact-finders and arbitrators involved in public-sector labor negotiations for ignoring the economic realities of the Mahoning Valley, we now find ourselves strongly endorsing a report on the proposed Youngstown patrol officers’ contract.
Dennis M. Byrne, a fact-finder from Munroe Falls, not only rejected the Youngstown Police Association’s demand for 3 percent annual raises in the three-year contract, but he clearly articulated in his report the challenges confronting Youngstown city government.
“ … the evidence in the record shows that the city of Youngstown faces severe financial problems,” Byrne wrote. “There is little prospect of a significant increase in revenues, which means that the city must find ways to curtail expenditures or it will face a situation where it must institute layoffs.”
We would take his analysis a step further and say that the next couple of years will be marked by a fiscal implosion the likes of which have not been seen since the collapse of the steel industry more than three decades ago.
Youngstown’s tax base is shrinking, the population is declining, neighborhoods are deteriorating, and the percentage of city residents not paying income tax keeps growing.
In the face of such realities, City Hall has no choice but to slash spending. And, as we have argued time and time again, reducing the cost of labor must be the top priority. That’s because a large portion of the operating funds in the public sector is taken up by salaries and benefits.
Mike Anderson, president of the 113-member Youngstown Police Association, is wrong when he suggests that the administration of Mayor John A. McNally does not value police because it won’t give in to the union’s wage-increase demands.
Thin ice
McNally well knows the city is skating on thin economic ice and that the future is bleak, at best.
Fact-finder Byrne’s recommending a 1 percent raise in the first year of the contract and freezes in the second and third years is not only reasonable, but is in line with what the other unions in the city received.
No one is arguing that the police department is unimportant and that the seemingly unsolvable crime rate demands more cops on the street. But here’s a question for Anderson and the 97 other patrol officers who voted to reject the fact-finder’s report: Would you rather hold on to a job that pays more than the $24,000 median income of a family of four in Youngstown, or would you prefer layoffs – because the cost of the three-year contract demanded by the YPA will drain the budget?
It is also important to remind the public that there are a goodly number of city employees who do not live in Youngstown because the Ohio Supreme Court scrapped residency requirements.
As a result of the patrol officers’ union rejecting the fact-finder’s report, a state conciliator will be brought in to break the contract impasse and render a binding decision. A conciliator settled the last labor contract dispute in April 2014.
“We look forward to once again presenting our case to the conciliator, and we’ll live with the results,” Mayor McNally said. “It’s time this union accepts the same language other unions are living under.”
In the end, it is about fiscal responsibility and fairness. While we have long supported the safety forces in the city of Youngstown because of the crime rates and fire hazards associated with an aging urban community, we do believe that all departments are important to ensure that government meets its obligations to provide for the health, safety and welfare of the people.
Even if there were the remotest of possibilities that Youngstown’s fiscal condition could improve in the next year or so, we would still be opposed to the 3 percent annual pay raises that the patrol officers are demanding.
When major employers such as Vallourec Star, once considered the great manufacturing hope for the city, are laying off workers, the message is clear: While the national economic recession of 2008 is over, regions like the Mahoning Valley are still dealing with the fallout.