Arbitration vote pits cops against council

By Dan MacArthur
Fossil Creek Current

Fort Collins police and the city council are locked in a take-no-prisoners battle over the Sept. 12 special election to decide whether the police will gain the right to binding arbitration.

If approved, the charter amendment would permit an independent third party to intervene if an impasse occurs in contract negotiations between the city and police. After reviewing the evidence, the arbitrator would issue a ruling both sides would be bound to accept.

A united city council contends it would handcuff the city's ability to manage its own affairs by potentially delegating decisions to an outsider not accountable to residents. The council also maintains the measure would undercut the city's ability to manage personnel by preventing it from ever reducing police compensation.

The police union insists the measure will improve public safety by ensuring police are treated fairly and insulated from politics so they can better concentrate on their work. They also contend that the potential for binding arbitration is essential to get the attention of a deceitful city administration that has manufactured a phony budget crisis.

"The $5.8 million (budget) deficit doesn't exist," said Scott Goff, president of the Northern Colorado Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #3.

As proof, he points to a financial analysis by an Oklahoma City consultant, commissioned by the FOP, showing that the city has consistently underestimated revenues and now has almost $14.5 million in unrestricted reserves available for any purpose.

"The financial crisis is a complete fabrication," Goff asserted.

An outraged Mayor Doug Hutchinson returned a volley of strong words in dismissing the FOP's claims of a contrived city budget crisis, although "ludicrous" was the only one he'd offer up for publication.

"That is totally specious, that's untrue," Hutchinson said. "I resent that to no end. The problems are absolutely real."

He said the FOP's claim is based on the faulty premise that those reserves could be tapped to cover the budget shortfall - something no responsible city would ever do.

Pay dispute

Increased compensation is certainly a critical component of the "Professional Policing Initiative" placed on the ballot following a successful $40,000 petition drive by the FOP.

Contrary to the mayor's claims that the city has been diligent in keeping their pay competitive, the FOP contends that compensation for Fort Collins cops has slipped behind other Front Range communities. Goff said that has affected the city's ability to attract and retain the best-qualified officers.

If anything, Hutchinson said, police "were treated in most cases substantially better than most employees." According to a city council statement opposing the initiative, the collective bargaining agreement this year resulted in wage increases ranging from just over 8 percent for police officers to almost 15 percent for dispatchers. The council noted that compares with the increases for other city employees capped at 5.9 percent for merit raises and 10 percent for skills-based adjustments.

According to the city's human resources office, the average annual salary for a Fort Collins police officer is $62,871 compared with the $52,761 salary for an average city employee. Sergeants earn an average of $81,100 and lieutenants $92,496.

"They didn't suffer the same cuts the rest of the employees did," said Hutchinson. "There are not too many places where without a college degree or some advanced degree you can have a job that pays as well as the police department."

Control issues

Even beyond the typical compensation issues, deeper and more fundamental differences between the council and the police center around control.

"It's never been about wages and benefits. It's about equitable treatment," Goff said, comparing what he characterized as the city's arrogant treatment of employees to its treatment of involuntarily annexed residents in the southwest enclave.

"We would like to be on a level playing field so they have to listen to us like we have to listen to them," said Goff.

Hutchinson said city negotiators did indeed listen to police and agreed to many of their demands before contract negotiations broke down after 58 days in 2005. But with binding arbitration, he said, the city's biggest concern is that the police could become a separate class of employees with its own pay structure.

"You have to look at the city overall in terms of employees," he said.

Because the initiative specifically prohibits reducing police compensation, "the city would be unable to effectively manage and contain escalating costs of employee benefits by making changes as may be necessary for this particular group of employees, even when those adjustments were made for all other employees," states a resolution of opposition adopted unanimously by the city council.

Collective begging

Hutchinson said council also opposes the possibility of turning over broad decision-making powers to an arbitrator it has little choice in selecting, and who lacks accountability and the intimate understanding of the city's operations.

"In binding arbitration, the arbitrator has no responsibility to citizens," he said, contending that an arbitrator could impose onerous conditions that the city couldn't afford.

"It's the city that picks the arbitrators! This is their list, not the FOP's. That was required by the Supreme Court and is in our charter amendment, and there are protections and rules the arbitrators have to follow," FOP vice president Mike Thornton stated in a newspaper commentary. "They can't decimate the city, as Hutchinson implies. That is just a lie."

Goff, with exasperation, questions why the city so fears binding arbitration. He said it has a better chance of persevering in any conflict because of its greater ability to support its positions. "I'm afraid the city staff will bury us in statistics," he said.

"I keep hearing that the city will lose all the time," Goff said. "In Colorado, the city typically doesn't lose. They don't seem to have much confidence in the city staff."

Moreover, Goff said, it's important to remember that binding arbitration would be used only when there is no hope of negotiating a contract. "Nobody wins arbitration; I know that," he said, noting that it's an expensive process with the union required to bear half the cost.

But binding arbitration must remain available as that last resort, he insisted. While police gained the right to bargain collectively in 2004, they are prohibited from striking. Without some other source of leverage to assure their demands are taken seriously, they have only "collective begging," Goff said.

Charter conflict

The FOP petitioned to place the binding arbitration issue on the ballot after the city successfully challenged a similar provision in the 2004 ordinance. A court held that the ordinance was subordinate to the city charter that placed all such decisions with the city council.

The process provoking police to pursue the current charter initiative certainly has contributed to the passion of the debate, particularly on the part of the FOP, which believes the city bargained in bad faith from the beginning.

Goff said city officials cautioned that the ordinance might be in conflict with the charter, and the union asked them to resolve it legally before negotiations began if they planned to do so. But based on the city's assurance that it would follow the voters' mandate, he said, the FOP entered into negotiations only to have the city challenge the binding arbitration provision after an impasse was reached.

"I don't think the city wanted to come to a negotiated agreement," Goff said. "What they told us is we're not going to do this, thank you very much."

"We were engaged in good-faith collective bargaining," Hutchinson countered. "Collective bargaining means we work in good faith with them. Collective bargaining is a great thing."

Given the city's obvious resistance, according to Goff, the FOP reluctantly decided the only remedy was a charter amendment.

Hutchinson and other council members have criticized the FOP for forcing a special election at a cost of $100,000. Hutchison also criticized the FOP for setting up a low-turnout, little-publicized election that will attract only its supporters to the polls.

But Goff insisted that the council had nobody to blame but itself for a costly election because it twice had the opportunity to include the binding arbitration issue in regular elections at no extra cost.

Hutchinson said the FOP also is playing "a bit careless with the facts," noting that his wife received a "push poll" asking whether she'd support collective bargaining for police. It was deceptive, he said, because the police already have collective bargaining, which is powerful in itself.

The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #3 has so far raised $65,500 in its campaign for passage of the Professional Police Initiative, according to a campaign disclosure statement filed Aug. 22 with the Fort Collins city clerk's office.

With no organized opposition, Hutchinson said, critics certainly can't compete in making their case. So far, he said, about the only opposing comments have come from the council and its individual members, who do not face the same prohibitions on involvement that city government does.

"We can't get the word out very well," Hutchinson said. "There's no group standing up to put the light of day on this issue because it takes time and it takes money."

The Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce suports the city council, however. Its board of directors unanimously voted to oppose the charter amendment and urged chamber members to vote against it.

Contending that binding arbitration is unnecessarily confrontational, the chamber board maintained the community could not afford binding arbitration and there would be no improvement in public safety as a result of the extra expense. The board further asserted that the measure would undercut local control by surrendering ultimate decision-making, typically to a labor lawyer who does not live in the community.

The FOP

The FOP represents some 4,000 members across Colorado, according to Goff, and Lodge #3 represents 450 officers from 34 police agencies in Northern Colorado. In Fort Collins, the bargaining unit includes 161 of the 195 eligible members - dispatchers, community service officers and commissioned officers at the rank of lieutenant and below. Union members pay $50 monthly dues.

Voters by a 3-1 margin rejected the union's first effort in 1991 to gain collective bargaining. However, voters in 2004 approved a similar measure by a slim 51-49 margin.

Mail ballots

The special election on binding arbitration will be conducted through mail ballot only. There will be no polling places. Ballots will be mailed directly to each registered elector at his or her address of record on file at the Larimer County Clerk's office. Ballots must be returned to the city clerk's office no later than 7 p.m. on Sept. 12.