Thursday, November 16, 2017
WARREN
With Trumbull County officials and the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association failing to reach an agreement on their own, a conciliator made the decision to award pay raises for 62 corrections officers at the county jail.
Conciliator Nels E. Nelson of Geauga County gave raises of 35 cents per hour for 2017, 30 cents in 2018 and 30 cents in 2019.
It amounts to a pay raise of between 2.2 percent and 1.5 percent the first year depending on length of service and between 1.8 percent and 1.5 percent in the second and third years.
Major Dan Mason, jail administrator, calculated the cost to the county of the raises to be around $45,000 this year and around $39,000 in 2018 and 2019.
The conciliator also thwarted the county commissioners’ efforts to reduce the amount of pension pickup the county pays for employees — a recommendation from a citizens budget review committee — by ordering the county to provide the same pension pickup to all of its corrections officers.
Under the previous agreement, the county picked up 8.5 percent of the employees’ share of his or her pension for those hired berfore the 2010 contract but 4 percent of the “pension pickup” for those hired after 2010.
The conciliator said he “understands the employer’s desire to reduce or eliminate the pension pick-up, [but] the continuing disparity has complicated the bargaining process and the time has come to end the problems associated with having significantly different levels of compensation for employees doing the same work.”
The county commissioners voted to approve the new contract several weeks ago but would not release details until this week, when all of the parties to the agreement had signed it.
The conciliator’s report, from August and obtained by The Vindicator through a public-records request, contains a long section discussing the county’s ability to pay and the arguments put forth by the county auditor’s office and the union.
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