Spin Cycle

The June 30 deadline for the expiration of bargaining unit contracts has come and gone.  The budget has been passed, but a discussion of cuts to some positions re-opens next week.  The new council will be seated this week.

The discussion of tree trimmers has distracted us from the central core of the arguments.  Back in May, we got a bit of a taste of this as two members of the public came forward during public comment to defend the Davis firefighters.

The argument we lay forward is rather simple.  The firefighters, from 2002 until 2008, used their disproportionate influence in the form of bundled city council campaign contributions and independent expenditures to elect friendly councilmembers who would then support them on the tough votes.

Thus, we saw the city move to the retroactive enhanced public safety benefits – not only going to pensions of 3% at the age of 50 but doing so retroactively which created large unfunded liabilities that future generations would have to pay.

We saw in 2005, following the half cent sales tax measure of 2004, that the city gave the firefighters a 36% raise over the course of the next contract.  The firefighters now receive on average over $150,000 a year in total compensation, more than any other rank and file bargaining unit.

The last council majority of Ruth Asmundson, Don Saylor and Stephen Souza would vote to support the 2009 MOU, a massive fire battalion chief reorganization that was never implemented, and of course their famous vote not to allow the council to read the Davis Fire Report.  All of these by 3-2 votes with the three councilmembers receiving firefighter donations voting on the side of firefighters.

Between 2002 and 2008, firefighter-backed candidates won 7 of 9 council spots.  The only exceptions were Sue Greenwald in 2008 and Lamar Heystek in 2006.

However, the firefighters want to tell a different tale.  The last round of MOUs has been soundly criticized on this site.  The problem was that the city did not get the savings it needed from the contracts, nor did it move sufficiently forward on the structural issues.

From our standpoint, we have lost three years and the result is that the $850,000 in cuts that the council approved in 2009, when Lamar Heystek argued for $1.57 million in cuts, then became $2.5 million in 2011 and $4 million this year.

Last week in our community budget commentary we wrote: “In other communities, such as Sacramento, the firefighters have cut deals with the city to avoid 40 layoffs. The firefighters receive by far the highest average level of compensation of any of the city’s bargaining units and yet the firefighters have been an impediment to reform in this community for years.”

However, one commenter – likely a firefighter himself – argued: “I remember reading on this blog that the firefighters gave back $ 850,000.00 dollars in salary concessions over the last 3 years. To [sic] bad that got wasted by the city for treating the DCEA employees unfairly Impediment = ( $ 850,000.00 ) Sorry blogger but your [sic] not following your truthfulness guidelines !”

Well, I would suggest to this individual that they did not read on this site that firefighters gave back $850,000 because we never once reported that they did.

This is the spin of the previous city management and the council majority.

In a joint December op-ed in 2009, Stephen Souza and Don Saylor wrote: “In aggregate, the savings to the city from this contract are about $887,000 over the three-year period in comparison to the costs of continuing the prior contract for this bargaining group.”

It is tricky language, but it is also completely misleading.  Let us say I get paid $100,000 this year.  This is the last year of a four-year contract that gave me a 36% raise over the previous four years.  That means if I am set to get a six percent raise this year, and you extend that raise, I get $106,000 next year.  Instead I take a 2% paycut.  That means I get $98,000.

At that time, the city was arguing that my $98,000 salary represented an $8000 savings to the city rather than a $2000.

It is a completely misleading argument.  The city is not actually saving $8000.

Sue Greenwald back on December 15, 2009 said, “I really take issue with this $800,000 savings, this is a savings that’s a savings that is over and above your projection.”

“When we look at the total savings, these very inflated figures that the staff spin has put on it, if you look at the figures that Paul gave me when I asked him, what is the total amount that we’re paying the baseline year of 2008-09 for the current contract?  $6,845,000,” she said.

She continued, “In year three of our contract year now, fiscal year 11-12, it’s going to be $6,758,000.  In year three we’re going to be paying .8 percent less than we do now.  Only $57,000 less, I don’t count that an $800,000 savings.  It’s an $800,000 savings over a bogus high projection based on past unsustainable contracts.  That’s what I call spin.”

In fact, in the final year of the MOU, this year, the city would only spent $57,000 less than it was spending in 2009.

Our calculation was that the actual savings in real dollars over what was actually spent in 2008-09 was $244,000 which came to about $81,000 a year in savings.

This was not a savings to the city, it was a math trick based on the firefighters forgoing another 36% pay raise.  I guess if you believe they were entitled to another comparable pay raise during the worst economic crisis in modern history, then they may have a point.

But for those of us who prefer to look at savings in terms of real and not projected numbers, the notion that the firefighters “gave back” $850,000 is absurd.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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