Commentary: Despite New Council Commitment, Change Will Not Be Easy

For the first time really, the council acknowledged the truth of the dilemma we face, and they were largely unanimous in their desire to make strong statements that will hopefully be followed with strong actions.

Where we are at is in a world of hurt.  As Councilmember Sue Greenwald told the council, “Starting two and a half years from now, when the permanent increases start to kick in, how much more per year in absolute dollars will we have to pay out in pensions and retiree health over what we pay today, assuming a one-half percent decrease in the return rate assumptions?”

The answer is scary.

“We will be paying $7 million more than we’re paying today,” Councilmember Greenwald said.

This time no one argued with Councilmember Greenwald.  It was not long ago when Councilmember Greenwald, Councilmember Souza, along with Don Saylor, and Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald were engaged in a campaign debate where Souza and Saylor’s view of the budget was one of triumph – balanced budget with a 15 percent reserve.

Pay no attention to the unmet needs that were mounting even at that time.  Pay no attention to the clouds on the fiscal horizon warning that salaries had increased over the past five years at an unsustainable rate and that they were coupled increases in the pensions.  Safety moved to 3% at 50, while non-safety moved to 2.5% at 55.

On this night, Mr. Souza stepped up, acknowledging the unsustainability of current structures and pushing for reform alongside his colleagues.

This is a huge first step.  But lest we believe this will be easy, just look at the line from the closed session meeting:

“Conference with Legal Counsel – Existing Litigation: Davis City Employee’s Association v. City of Davis, California Public Employment Relations Board Case No. SA-CE-672-M”

You see, the Davis City Employees Association 9DCEA) is fighting to the core on the last Memorandum of Understanding.  Yes, the MOU that did not go nearly far enough was too much for DCEA.  And that is the largest bargaining group in the city.

In May of 2010, the Council unanimously voted to impose an impasse on the city’s largest bargaining group.  Lest one thinks impasse is the answer, the city is still fighting it.

From the city’s perspective, DCEA was simply unwilling to go to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith.  And while other bargaining groups accepted concessions, most of which the Vanguard has argued fell well short of what was needed to have occurred, our understanding of DCEA is that their last, best, and final offer to the city fell well short of even those.

The provisions of the City’s “last, best, final” contract proposal is comparable to the contracts signed by the other bargaining units.  According to the City staff report, “The provisions of the City’s ‘last, best, final’ contract proposal would yield budgetary all-funds savings of $507,000 and General Fund savings of $203,000 in the current fiscal year. This represents a savings of 4.52% compared to the FY2009/10 cost of the existing DCEA Memorandum of Understanding, and a savings of 3.34% in comparison to the prior year cost for this contract.”

Council then got an earful of allegations from DCEA.

Ken Aikens, a lawyer representing the Davis City Employee’s Association, told the council, “The issue really revolves around whether or not the city has an obligation to follow its own resolution.”  He continued, “The rule as adopted calls for fact-finding as the final resolution to the process.  Now there is also an accusation that we have been an obstructionist to the process.”

At least five of the employees came forward to speak at length, arguing that the city was negotiating in bad faith, they argued that certain councilmembers have recommended we go to impasse and that this is an example of bad faith and they argue that the current terms are not unreasonable.

As one of the employees said, “I was really looking at city council and government pretty closely and what I saw was going on is you have fat years and you have lean years and in those fat years you add programs, you add employees, you add services, and then you have lean years and every time… in those lean years you cut back services and if it keeps going you cut back employees if you have to.  You make hard decisions.  We all know their [sic] hard decisions, but sometimes they’re necessary decisions that have to be made.”

“This year it’s a little different because I feel what’s happening is instead of just looking at that, and this is out of the words of some councilmembers, that is the last step we will take in cutting services to the people of Davis,” she continued.  “I’ve never seen a city council that I felt was, not all of you, but some, are very negative towards city employees.”  She went to talk about some of the negative comments that have come out including that city employees do not deserve these benefits because most are clerical and do not do hard labor.

I could go on rehashing the statements from DCEA members and councilmembers from the May City Council meeting, but the bottom line here is that the city proposed a very modest set of changes and DCEA balked at them.  Just wait until we have to face real hard changes.

And that is what is going to need to happen.

At the last meeting, Harriet Steiner warned council against making statements that were too concrete as to imply bad faith negotiations, but the bottom line is that Council needs to amp up their rhetoric and explain to the public and through the public tto heir employees that we are in a crisis.

The $7 million figure cited by Sue Greenwald is alarming because it only assumes a decrease from a 7.75% annual rate of return to 7.25%.  We may be going lower than that.

But where are we getting $7 million from?  It is either coming from employee concessions or laying off employees.  Bargaining groups often prefer the latter since they are made up of senior members less likely to be laid off.

The employees need to understand that they are going to have to give and give a lot more now than they did.  I do not think they are prepared for this.  That is evidenced by the continuing dispute with DCEA over the last MOU, which will pale in comparison to the next MOU.

And moreover, there was not one bargaining group, not one representative of a bargaining group, and other than the city staff giving a report, not one member of city staff in the audience two weeks ago to hear the report.

This is going to be the most difficult change that this city has faced.  And the public has to be prepared to see some of the things that we love most about this community go by the wayside.  We will not be able to perform to maintain our parks and greenbelts to the level that we have.  We may not have the recreational services available for children and other members of the public, and if we do they will cost us a lot more.

We may have to see a cutback of even public safety services.

The Police Ombudsman Bob Aaronson, in his annual review of the police department, gives mostly good news, but on the ominous side he mentions, “The past year saw the surfacing of other unanticipated longterm organizational shortcomings, primarily caused and obscured by an absence of adequate accountability up and down the chain of command. In essence, some undersupervised employees weren’t working very hard and some criminal cases were falling through the cracks.”

Now he does say that the Department discovered the problems on their own as part of their internal reviews and they have also reinstituted the Professional Standards position, one of the positions the Vanguard and Councilmember Lamar Heystek fought to preserve back in 2009.

However, with the budget situation getting worse, these types of problems are bound to increase not only in the police department, but in all departments.

Worse yet are signs of trouble within the Davis Police Officer’s Association.  Traditionally, they have been much more reasonable in their bargaining stance than, say, the firefighters, who earned a 36% increase back in 2005 when the police got about half of that.

But now we have confirmed reports that tensions are mounting and that may result in a different bargaining stance in the future.

We are going to need everyone on board this to make it work.  A lot of employees feel that they have been scape-goated.  This is not personal.  It is part of the public process.  It is not the fault of most of the employees or even the bargaining groups.

The primary responsibility rested with past city councils who were flatly irresponsible in the benefits that they gave away in past bargaining sessions, with some of the salary increases, with the increases in pension formulas and lowering retirement age. 

The employees had every right to seek these benefits, unfortunately, the councils had a fiduciary responsibility to oppose these increases and they did not.  That is why we are there.  I have no blame for the employees.  We are all in this together now.

The voters and taxpayers face a huge decrease in services, the employees face either steep concessions or deep layoffs.  That is where we are.  Unfortunately, that puts the next move on the employees as the council has already made their views known.

If the conflict with DCEA is any indication, we are in for a rough ride.

—David M. Greenwald reporting