Republican Freeholders Larry Wallace and Vince Nestore are challenging the county over a union contract they say is misleading but the county says is a coup.
The board of freeholders approved a new $1.98 million contract with Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Lodge 199 — representing 21 corrections sergeants — earlier this month.
Administrator Chad Bruner touted the contract as a win for the county, with its elimination of bonuses and longevity payments and the implementation of a new salary guide that will reduce salaries for new hires by thousands of dollars in the future. The cost of the contract will only increase an average of 1.43 percent each year over the life of the contract, he said.But Wallace and Nestore — who voted against the contract — said the county is sugarcoating some of its more unsavory details.
While technically bonuses have been eliminated, the base salary for sergeants increased from an average of $81,000 under the old contract to $95,000 in the new one, mirroring roughly what sergeants were making under the old contract, post bonuses.
The Republican freeholders said the county simply “rolled in” the bonuses to the base salary. Bruner said that’s an unfair characterization, but the language in the contract explicitly states “Existing employees have had such compensation rolled into base salary and new employees hired after 1/11/11 are not eligible.”
Wallace said he believes the county advertised the bonus elimination aspect of the contract because it “sounds good. It’s cleaner … It looks to me like they tried to grab a headline by not letting you know what really happened.”
But it’s not transparent, he argued. “We’re not quantifying whether this is a good contract or a bad contract. (But) the whole deck of cards should be laid out on the table … (Vince and I) ran very openly on open government. Show what our government is doing, whether it’s good or bad, whether people agree or disagree … People have a right to know.”
Bruner countered the new contract is transparent. That was the whole point of it — to eliminate all the hidden bonuses people didn’t see if they just flipped through the pages of the old contract.
“There’s no games, gimmicks or additional stuff in there,” he said. “It doesn’t look good politically. It looks good for our budget.”
What concerns Wallace and Nestore more, in a fiscal sense anyway, is the implication behind the higher base salary.
In the old FOP 199 contract, the pensionable salary — what the county (and sergeants) was responsible to contribute toward — was the combination of the base salary ($75,000) and the longevity payment ($6,000).
Under the new contract, with its $14,000 higher new base/pensionable salary, the county’s pension obligation is significantly higher, the Republican freeholders said.
“Now, everything is pensionable,” Wallace said. “They’re kicking the can down the road … Are we heading toward a pension crisis in 20 to 30 years using the precedent they set here?”
The Republicans calculated the county’s pension obligation — just for FOP 199 — would jump by about $92,000 this year, using a formula posted on the state’s pension website which shows counties paying 31 percent of base salary toward employee pension.
The county paid $1.68 million for sergeants’ salaries in 2010 and is projected to pay $1.92 million this year, for a difference of roughly $240,000. If the county obligation is 31 percent of that, $92,000 (or thereabout) is accurate.
But it’s not 31 percent, Bruner said. While he couldn’t explain the state’s numbers, he said based on previous years’ pension payments the county obligation is around 16 or 17 percent.
So while the county’s payments toward pension will no doubt increase, they won’t jump at the rate the Republicans are claiming, the administrator said. And they’ll be offset by the savings built into the contract, like the use of comp time in lieu of overtime and the salary guide for new hires, not to mention the anticipated attritioning of two sergeants within the next year.
Wallace said the administrator’s rosy outlook “takes into account a lot of assumptions.” Those retirements aren’t guaranteed, sergeants aren’t required to take comp time (it’s an option in the contract) and the contract is only for five years, he said, so the salary guide could change in the next round of negotiations.
Not to mention that the state’s formula for figuring out pension obligations is in constant flux. Sixteen or 17 percent this year could be 20 or 25 percent next year, he said.
Regardless of how the numbers play out, Wallace and Nestore suggested this latest squabble with the county is further evidence why one of their suggested transparency reforms — fiscal impact statements for every contract — should be adopted.
“The moral of the story is, we believe the public has a right to know the fiscal impact of these decisions,” Wallace said. “If you’re doing everything right, you shouldn’t have anything to hide.”