Portland city commissioners unanimously voted to approve a new three-year contract with the police union that gives the 900 union members a 2-percent raise in exchange for concessions on overtime, police oversight and random drug testing.
And while other City of Portland unions gave up cost-of-living increases in 2010 in light of the recession (see update below), Commissioner Randy Leonard called today's deal with the Portland Police Association "an historic agreement" because of those other concessions.
Today's vote comes more than a month after the police association reached a tentative agreement on the deal, which was first detailed in WW in December.
The new deal which had been under negotiation for more than a year says city officials will test officers randomly for drugs like marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines—but not steroids. Although the agreement gives management the authority to test officers for steroid use, which Human Resources Director Yvonne Deckard acknowledges "is a problem," those tests are currently too costly for the city to justify, Deckard says.
"That technology is still in the making," she says. (Side note: Any officers found to be abusing drugs will be offered treatment first under the new agreement.)
The city's budget gurus put the cost of the new contract at $5.5 million to $6.1 million for the life of the contract and $3.7 million a year after it expires in about 1 2 1/2 years. Here's more:
The
estimated fiscal impact of implementing the new PPA labor agreement
during the three-year contract period is approximately $5.5 million in
base wages and other costs. In addition, costs may increase by another $650,000 if overtime remains at its current level. However,
the contract contains provisions related to comp time that may help the
Police Bureau control the scheduling of shifts and reduce overtime
going forward.
In addition to the costs noted above, the PPA contract will also impact the City's five-year financial forecast. The
three-year contract costs noted above reflect the fact that certain
provisions (physical fitness premium and education premium) have a
delayed implementation date. The annualized cost
of the fully implemented contract, if extended into the next labor
agreement, will be approximately $3.7 million a year starting in FY
2013-14. This amounts to approximately a 4.1% increase in PPA wages and wage-driven benefits. Financial Planning will add these costs to the five-year forecast when we update the forecast in late April. Since
the City balances over five years, these increased costs will have a
material impact on the resources available in FY 2011-12 and beyond
unless offset by unexpected revenue growth.
Mayor Sam Adams called the deal the "most aggressive set of police reforms...in a generation."
Update at 2:45 pm: The Portland Police Association also gave up cost-of-living increases in 2010, so the sentence in the second paragraph requires some clarification. The difference between the police union agreement and other new labor contracts is that police will get an across-the-board increase of 2 percent plus a cost-of-living increase pegged to the consumer price index in July 2011. The other unions will get the cost-of-living bump but no across-the-board raises then.
Portland Repudiates Recession And Public Anger - New Contract INCREASES Salaries, PERS & Health Insurance Costs
No matter where you live in Oregon, the Portland city council's recent decision to include in its latest public employee contract negotiations a two percent pay raise and cost-of-living increase while making no change to PERS and health insurance contributions, (city pays 95% health, 100% PERS) which means also increasing total benefit costs, has set a public example that will have an effect on the many taxing districts in which you live.
The Portland city council has just approved a contract with 914 public employees that runs blindly contrary to the reality of recession, 10.5% unemployment and a state budget shortfall of 3.5 billion dollars. Interestingly, neither the mayor’s office nor any commissioner’s office was able to say how much the city’s contribution was to PERS and health insurance, clearly indicating that neither PERS nor health insurance contributions were ever on the table for negotiation.
Now, their votes may have been based on the fact that all of these particular public employees are armed. If that's the case then perhaps we can expect the unarmed public servants of Portland to start kicking in a lot more to their PERS and health insurance when their contracts are up for renewal, or not. Both armed and unarmed state employees understand that the question is not whether they increase their contributions to PERS and health insurance but how much.
Former governor Ted Kulongoski’s Reset Cabinet proposed the following researched, reasoned and reasonable proposals:
Portland’s newest contract with its public employees arrogantly rejects, with a poke in the eye and an extended middle finger, every one of these ideas.
Contrast Portland’s mayor Sam Adams who doesn’t get it with New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg who does get it.
New York City has long had the well deserved reputation of succumbing to powerful municipal unions and their political allies. Today, however, growing concerns about the devastating impact of soaring pension costs and rising anti-union sentiments, even among traditional labor allies, have persuaded mayor Bloomberg to propose that public employees need to contribute more of their own money to their retirement accounts.
Despite the Portland city council’s fear, ignorance and lack of interest in the skyrocketing costs of PERS and health insurance contributions you can bet the ranch that the TriMet board and every member of the Oregon legislature are knowledgeable and concerned about government contributions to PERS and health insurance for public employees. Publicly elected officials of every stripe and from every corner of Oregon will have to come to grips with this issue.
Portland's Health Insurance Contributions
How does allowing, indeed, encouraging increased payments via an open ended percentage contribution to the private for-profit health insurance industry advance the Portland city council’s unanimous vote to support Single-Payer? They have not even asked their own lobbyist to promote Single-Payer in Salem. The words hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance are apt descriptors here. Maybe the popular, comedy assault on the perception of Portland’s precious precocious progressiveness on cable TV’s Portlandia series will include a sketch with this theme.
To move forward on Portland's unanimous Single-Payer resolution the council needs to establish a low fixed number contribution to employee health insurance, say $300/month (what I, as a self-employed Portland taxpayer can barely afford). Paying $700 a month or so from their own pockets will give public employees a different perspective on the painful reality of health care costs. When the insurance rates rise, as they inevitably will, the pressure will grow on the public employee unions, not the city, to pressure the state and federal legislators they have financed and control to pass a Single-Payer health care plan. Like the city of Portland, most public and private unions in Oregon have voted for Single-Payer resolutions. And, like Portland, they have done nothing to pressure their legislative minions to submit and pass Single-Payer legislation.
A Single-payer health care plan that covered ALL Oregonians including armed and unarmed public employees would go a long long way towards eliminating the rising tide of anger between tapped-out, stressed-out taxpayers - many with inadequate to no health care coverage - and those in the public sector enjoying thousand dollar a month plus health insurance premiums.
The Fundamental Political Questions And Answers
The basic questions of all political conversations are: Who Gets? Who Pays?
The answers are always: Those with the most guns, the largest sticks, the loudest voices and the biggest bank accounts - Get. Everybody else - Pays.
Nevertheless, if we do not overcome this natural law of the political jungle then the Portland and the Oregon we love will no longer be worthy of our affection and the admiration and desire of those outside our borders.
Richard Ellmyer
Former unarmed progressive candidate for the North Portland House seat in the May 2010 primary who supports the reasoned and reasonable conclusions and recommendations of former governor Kulongoski’s Reset Cabinet. Defeated by establishment Democrat Tina Kotek who supports the status quo and opposes the reasoned and reasonable conclusions and recommendations of former governor Kulongoski’s Reset Cabinet - unless and until her major financial contributors and masters in the leadership of the public and private unions order her to do otherwise.