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MPOA balk at pay offer •  The bottom line on safety •  The cost of public safety •

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What the Star-News has to Say (below)

 The bottom line of safety

An editorial from the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News, March 18, 2008

PUBLIC safety is always the No. 1 concern of those who live in our region.

Public safety also costs big bucks, more of them every year.

Right now, many local cities are confronted with ever-higher costs for police and fire employees - especially for their retirement packages. After decades of work on the part of these indispensable people and their unions, their salaries and benefits are at extraordinary levels befitting their extraordinary performance.

But there's a point beyond which taxpayers cannot go. While no city wants to sacrifice public safety, many are being squeezed by aggressive bargaining tactics from public safety employee unions on one side, and reduced tax revenues from a slumping economy on the other.

Cities are required to balance their budgets; they can't borrow their way into the black, as the state Legislature and governor do far too often.

That's why it is crucial - today more than ever - for cities to take a strong stand against unreasonable demands for compensation from employee unions. Granting pay raises to police and fire employees that jeopardize fiscal solvency or lead to cuts in other services is foolish and irresponsible. When the budget tilts too much toward employee compensation, police and fire included, we believe the quality of life in the small and medium-sized cities of southeastern Los Angeles Countyand the San Gabriel Valley deteriorates.

Today, the city of Monrovia, population 39,900, is getting prepared to take a courageous stand for fiscal responsibility. After months of considerate, reasonable negotiations, its City Council is ready to impose a one-year contract with the Monrovia Police Officers Association, albeit one that the union has already rejected.

We think the city has negotiated in good faith. We also see the city's offer of a 5.5 percent pay raise over 3.5 years - 16.5percent overall - as not only reasonable, but generous. Any other employee group in the private sector would be thrilled with such an offer during these troubled economic times. But the police officers' association reportedly wants a 23.2 percent raise.

The one-year offer to be set tonight will hike the salary of a police officer by 4.68 percent and a sergeant by 6.19 percent. Top scale for each would go to $71,064 and $91,512, respectively. The city's offer also increases the city contribution to retirees' medical benefits, which for employees of 25 years or more would be a one-time lump sum of $4,000. The city already offers the most generous retirement benefits of "3 percent at 50," which means an employee of 30 years, multiplied by 3percent, gets 90 percent of his salary upon retirement as part of the CalPERS system.

Again, these are generous benefits. In fact, we're concerned that cities are shortchanging other services to pay hefty salaries and benefits to city employees.

Monrovia's police union has used scare tactics in its campaign to get the largest pay raise possible, telling residents in 11,000 "robo calls" that the city has "ignored" officers' request for "the resources to make our city more secure." By taking advantage of a spate of gang shootings in December and January, the tactic is a new low in campaigning. We're not convinced that more officers is the solution. In fact, some union members have suggested not filling the four officer vacancies and distributing the savings to the existing members through raises, a councilman told us.

If more officers is not an answer, more pay for existing ones is no answer, either.

After 30 or so community meetings, city officials and neighborhood leaders say there needs to be a more comprehensive anti-gang effort, one that Mayor Rob Hammond says should include suppression combined with intervention programs, such as Monrovia's Youth Employment Service or summer job program.

These programs cost money. Expanding them costs money - money that Monrovia would not have if it went above and beyond a 16.5 percent increase.

Monrovia is acting responsibly in its budget decisions. It's time for Monrovia's excellent - and well-compensated - police officers to do the same.

Scare tactics are bad form

An editorial from the May 9, 2008 Pasadena-Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News

OUR general dislike for billboards along otherwise picturesque highways aside, a public employees' union certainly has as much right as anyone to rent one.

It even has the right, from a free-speech point of view, to on that billboard engage in fear-mongering tactics, whether or not doing so exhibits a lot of wisdom or ethical sense.

And any constituent, from a technical point of view, has the ability to threaten to launch a recall campaign against elected officials. It's part of our democracy, even if it should be used in the rarest of circumstances against those who have after all been elected by the people.

But should a police officers union, entirely made up of individuals sworn to protect the public safety, really engage in all of these tactics under the guise of being concerned about said safety, when what it really is after is a mega-hefty pay raise, after a hefty one has already been offered?

Not by our lights it shouldn't.

Not in a California that has just seen the Bay area suburb of Vallejo forced into bankruptcy after it caved one too many times to union demands and had a budget that was 80 percent devoted to police and fire salaries.

But that's just what the Monrovia Police Officers Association - or at least its leadership and lawyer - is doing to Monrovians.

And it's unconscionable, not to mention sleazy, and hardly the kind of behavior citizens expect from those who protect our public safety.

"You're approaching Monrovia. Higher violent crime. Fewer officers patrolling," reads the mammoth billboard, with a photograph of a patrol car surrounded by yellow caution tape.

It's hard to believe that kind of propaganda is designed to endear the union's cause to Monrovians. Most citizens paying attention there know that the City Council has made a fair pay-hike offer with remarkable benefits for the already well-compensated officers. It won't go any further because to do so would be fiscally unsound.

Unlike many decades ago, we've come to a time in our society where we pay police and firefighters extremely well. They are able to retire in their early 50s with pensions, often amounting to 90 percent of their last salary level, that most Californians could only dream of.

Which way, Monrovia? The Vallejo way, which means teetering toward bankruptcy? We think the Gem City's citizens, as well as others in our region faced with similar blackmail by misguided union leadership, will continue to instead choose fairness and prudence.

The cost of public safety

Vallejo is one of those medium-sized California cities with a fine setting - on the San Francisco Bay - and a history - twice capital of the state - that nevertheless manage to be somewhat forgettable and often overlooked.

The news last week that Vallejo is currently on the verge of bankruptcy, and would be the first California city ever to go formally into that balance-sheet red state, has made it unlikely that we will ever forget Vallejo again.

We'll hope, with Vallejans - Vallejoites? - that their city manages to right its economic ship.

But we also need to view its predicament as a cautionary tale and to realize that many of our own hometowns, while in somewhat better shape, are in danger of spending more than they take in as well.
The culprit, sadly, is the collective good guys - the police and firefighters who provide such excellent public-safety services to us all.

Not that we blame them individually. Over the last three decades, their union representatives have simply negotiated unbelievable deals with city councils up and down the Golden State on both their current salary levels and especially their retirement benefits.

Those pensions often allow officers and firefighters to retire in their early 50s with 90 percent of their pay. Forever. With Americans commonly living into their late 80s and early 90s, forever is a long, long time.
In Vallejo, about 80 percent of the city's operating budget goes to paying police and fire salaries and pensions. Those salaries are extraordinarily high: 98 firefighters there make more than $100,000 a year, and 10 made more than $200,000 last year, including overtime pay. Wonderful news for themselves and their families, and when they retire, they will be in very high clover indeed.

Meanwhile, the city of 117,000 could go bankrupt because of those salaries and pensions as early as next month.

Locally, our cities are not in quite the same pickle. But just as in Vallejo, property-tax revenues are plunging. Sales taxes as well can be expected to drop in a recessionary economy. And those public safety salaries are going to stay high.

Sampling cities in our area, about 44 percent of Pasadena's $212 million annual operating budget goes to police and fire, including pensions. In Whittier, the number is 50 percent. But in smaller La Verne, it's as high as 72 percent.

Every city is different. A more suburban La Verne does not have anything like the revenue-side opportunities of a Pasadena. Every smaller, more residential California city is going to pay a higher percentage of its budget for the most essential services it provides, police and fire, than will the larger and more complex cities.

Still and all - forewarned is forearmed. All of us want to compensate police and firefighters fairly. But we can't continue to let our elected officials negotiate deals with the unions that put us in such financial jeopardy. And we would hope that even the unions would be open to renegotiation of deals so bad that they put all Californians in danger of seeing their cities go financially upside down.

The first rule of economics is that trees don't grow to the skies. It's great that we're able to compensate employees well for protecting the public safety. But if California cities can't afford to rehire new cops and firefighters when the old ones retire, none of us is going to be very safe at all.

Officers take contract position to the streets

March 10, 2008 Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribure/ Whittier Daily News Melissa Pamer, Staff Writer

MONROVIA - As the city reaches a contentious turning point in its contract negotiations with sworn public safety personnel, residents are getting an earful from the police officers' association.

Over the weekend, off-duty officers talked to Monrovians and handed out fliers at local grocery stores. On Friday, automatic phone calls went out to 11,000 households warning of a "crisis" and saying city officials have "ignored" the association's request for "the resources to make our city more secure."

Officials denied those assertions on the city Web site and in e-mails to residents that attempted to explain the complex details of contract negotiations that have simmered for months, waiting until now to boil over.

The attention comes as the spotlight on the city's public-safety efforts was beginning to fade, after six weeks of calm followed a series of gang shootings in December and January.

References to "dangerous gangs" and "senseless violence" have been employed in the association's calls for residents to lobby City Hall in support of increased public-safety funding.

"This is a public relations negotiation," said Mayor Rob Hammond. "Would anybody really believe that locally elected officials in Monrovia would actually do something that would cause ourselves to be unsafe? The decisions we make affect us - our property values, our neighbors, our relatives."

The Monrovia Police Officers Association and city officials

have been meeting since spring, trying to negotiate a replacement contract for the four-year agreement that expired June 30, 2007. They've been far apart the whole time, representatives of both sides said.

The situation became pivotal on Friday, when the police association's lawyer informed City Manager Scott Ochoa that the city's fourth offer - of a 16.5percent raise over three and a half years - was rejected.

Attorney Dieter Dammeier, who specializes in police contract negotiations and who in January got a 24.4 percent boost over four years for Arcadia officers, said the Monrovia association wants a 23.2 percent raise.

"If their original request was something that could be afforded, we would have granted that," Hammond said. "But it's just impossible."

The wide difference in numbers stems in part from how the city calculates officers' compensation in comparison to 13 San Gabriel Valley cities.

According to the association's Web site, Monrovia pays its officers the lowest among those 13 cities. That has affected the Police Department's morale and ability to retain and recruit officers, Dammeier said.

"If we were at average, a 16.5percent raise over three years is a good deal," Dammeier said. "But we're not at average."

Ochoa called Dammeier's calculation "sleight of hand," saying the city's offer would have put total compensation at a fifth-place ranking compared to the 13 cities.

The difference in math comes from the way officials calculate retirement benefits - CalPERS - as part of total compensation. The compensation formula that includes Cal- PERS, which the city and association have relied on for the past two decades, is suddenly being questioned, Ochoa said.

"The city is spending real dollars for all these benefits," Ochoa said, adding that the city needed to account for retirement costs in order to be fiscally responsible.

"Public safety is second only to fiscal responsibility. That statement offends people. But truly, if you don't have fiscal responsibility, how can you provide public safety?" Ochoa said. "It's hard to provide public safety when you're bankrupt."

Ochoa said some local city managers he had spoken with calculate retirement benefits the same way Monrovia does. Dammeier said the cities that he had negotiated contracts with - more than 100 - did not.

Officers plan to picket and attend "en masse" the next City Council meeting (March 18), where elected officials will, under state law, consider unilaterally implementing a one- year contract.

That contract would be retroactive to July 1, 2007, meaning the parties would be back at the negotiating table almost immediately to secure an agreement for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2008.

Monrovia police balk at pay offer

March 19 Pasadena Star-News

By Melissa Pamer, Staff Writer

MONROVIA - The police union plans to continue lobbying publicly for increased pay, following a move by the City Council to unilaterally implement a one-year contract.

Dozens of off-duty officers and their family members picketed City Hall prior to a contentious council meeting Tuesday night, holding blue "Support Our Police" signs.

The 72-member Monrovia Police Officers' Association had in recent days sought public support for its efforts to get a 23.2% raise. Residents received e-mails, automated phone calls and mailers after months-long contract negotiations came to an impasse almost two weeks ago.

The city responded with its own campaign, saying Monrovia could not afford to satisfy the MPOA's demands.

The association on March 6 rejected the city's offer of a 16.5 percent raise over 3 1/2 years, paving the way for the implementation of the "last, best and final" offer.

When the council began to debate the contract measure Tuesday, MPOA members left the packed council chambers en masse.

That prompted Mayor Rob Hammond to angrily call the move disrespectful and "childish."

Hammond reinforced the message from City Manager Scott Ochoa's 45-minute presentation that the city had offered police officers all it can afford.

"If you don't like what I said, I'm going to give you a solution. It's called a recall election," Hammond said.

The unanimous vote forced a retroactive police contract - along with a 4.68 percent

raise for officers - that will expire at the end of June. A new set of negotiations will begin again in the coming weeks.

"We're not going to wait until next time. Our public outreach will continue and it will grow," said Dieter Dammeier, the lawyer for the MPOA, who recently obtained a 24.4 percent raise for Arcadia police officers.

Dammeier was a target of the council at the meeting.

Several council members called the city's officers "friends" and sought to separate individuals from the strategies they employed.

"If they come back to the table in July with the same mind set and the same representation, they may damage themselves beyond repair," said Councilman Dan Kirby. "I'm just floored at their tactics."

But officers said the time had come for new tools in their fight to get increased pay.

"It's a critical juncture," said Detective Bob Manuel, an 18-year veteran of the Monrovia Police Department and MPOA board member. "There's been a lot of dissatisfaction over the years."

The officers who spoke to the council detailed long overtime hours and low morale. Officers from Azusa, which guarantees the highest pay in the San Gabriel Valley, said they had brought job applications for their Monrovia brethren.

One sticking point in the negotiations, and a topic at the meeting, was the 13-city salary survey Monrovia uses to determine how its officers are paid, comparatively. By the city's calculation, Monrovia officers are paid 5 percent above the average. The MPOA said the city's compensation is the lowest.

Dammeier has advocated for different survey methods, saying other cities do not account for retirement benefits as part of compensation the way Monrovia does.

But Ochoa pointed to seven nearby cities that do calculate the city's retirement payments similarly. When Dammeier sought to rebut that statement, Kirby told him to sit down, stating that public comment was over.

Officers said they hope the recent attention will give them traction for future negotiations. But city officials said the bleak economy and budget shortfall in Sacramento means Monrovia may soon have less to offer.