(OMAHA, NE) – On August 8, 2011, the Omaha Alliance for the Private Sector, after carefully reviewing the proposed labor contract for the firefighters union and labor contracts from other cities across America, is asking the City Council to significantly modify the proposed labor contract and wait until October, when the new Commission for Industrial Relations rules become law.

“This labor contract is another example of city leadership being too accommodating and handing a terribly expensive labor contract to the City Council for a vote.  It’s time for city leaders to take a tough stand and begin modifying our existing labor contracts so that they look more comparable to other cities,” said Chip Maxwell, Executive Director of the Alliance.

The Alliance recommends these changes:

The Big 10 Changes Needed in Firefighter Contract

Show Fiscal Stewardship for Taxpayers

Call Your Council Member at:  402-444-5520

I. Eliminate language that allows “Memoranda of Understandings” to modify the contract.

A)     No labor contract is a contract, if it can be modified by other parties later, after it is approved.  You don’t know what you have approved! The Council must know today what they are voting on.

B)    NFPA 1710 should be a goal, not a mandate!

II. Eliminate language that exempts total pension costs from CIR comparisons.

A)    The entire cost of the pension plan should be factored into the analysis for hourly wages, not just current funding costs.  Remember, the firefighters pushed for the pension plan changes in 2003.  If they made a mistake, they should also be responsible for the funding shortages.  The taxpayers shouldn’t be the only ones covering for their mistake.

III. Remove the Expansion of Union Hours for Officers.

A)     There is no union group that has worked harder at suing the City of Omaha than the fire union and there is no employee group who has demonstrated a worse ability to comply with the terms of previous labor contracts than the fire union.

B)    It would be incredibly foolish for the City to pay the union President to work full-time, on the taxpayer’s dime, so he can further attack the city.   There should not be “Detached Duty” allowed for Executive Board Meetings.

IV. Eliminate Restrictions on Staffing.

A)     The CIR gave management complete control over staffing, ranking and equipment in service.  The new language in the contract that only permits reductions through attrition is something not found in any other labor contract that we could find.  This seriously undermines the CIR ruling and must be removed from the contract.

V. Change the Retirement Payout Formula.

A)    The older employees were the ones that pushed for better pension benefits in 2003 that caused the funding catastrophe.  It is unfair to ask the taxpayers to fully cover for their plan design mistakes.

B)    The retirement payout should return to what it looked like in the 2003 contract with the COTA provisions.  All employees, not just the young should sacrifice since their scheme to lower the retirement age and increase the payout was such a financial catastrophe.

C)    Every form of compensation above base pay should be removed from the benefit formula for retirement payouts.

D)   These changes could bring the annual pension costs back to 25% of pay rather than the 33% proposed.

VI. Transfer all employees to the Health Benefit formula of Civilian Employees.

A)      By changing the deductible, co-insurance and out of pocket features to mirror that of the Civilian Employees, the annual cost of the benefit plan should reduce by at least 20%.  Additional features such as Health Savings Accounts should also be implemented to lower costs and special perks like Lasik Surgery for family members should be eliminated.

VII.   Eliminate the DEFERRED RETIREMENT OPTION Program.

A)     If older employees are willing to continue to work, just extend the retirement age.  It is not wise to incent the oldest employees to continue working at the highest income ranges, with the highest  medical costs, by paying them both their wages and the pension at the same time.  This will have unintended consequences that are not good.

VIII. Remove language mandating the training of 24 Paramedics per year.

A)     How many paramedics to be trained in a given years should be a “Management Prerogative,” not a mandate in the contract.

IX. Eliminate all supplemental areas of compensation and adjust hourly wage accordingly.

A)     The increase in Paramedic Pay, Special Operations Pay, Bureau Employee Pay, Rescue 51 Pay, and Suppression “Specialty” Employee Pay should be removed and the hourly wage only should reflect the total compensation.

B)      A complete audit of the financial consequences of all these contract changes should be completed before this contract is approved.  These create increases in compensation in years when wages were to remain flat.

X.   Any pay increases per the contract should be tied to the actual cost of living rate in those given years.

TOTAL ANNUAL SAVINGS TO TAXPAYERS:

III.  Removal of full time union President position & union hours:         $  150,000

IV.   Allow for reductions in staff now (Reduce by 36 @ $75,000):       $2,700,000

V.    Change Pension Formulas to 2003 levels (Est.):                           $5,000,000

VI.  Change in Health Insurance Plan to Civilian Formula (Est.):           $1,780,000

Total Savings:                                 $9,630,000

These savings do not reflect the adjustments that would be made in compensation should the new rules for CIR comparisons take effect after October 1, 2011.  Pension and benefit credits along with Cost of Living adjustments may save significantly more.

All of these recommended changes will not have any negative impact on public safety. After these changes are made in the contract, final approval should be delayed until October 1, 2011, when the new CIR rules take effect.

Omaha Alliance for the Private Sector, 9850 Nicholas Street, Suite 305, Omaha, NE  68114

Please block out Tuesday afternoon (next week the 9th) at 2pm to attend the Omaha City Council meeting where they will be taking public testimony on the proposed Fire Union Contract. No other city in America would approve this contract as is, so please attend and help keep our Councilpersons from making another labor contract mistake.

Sincerely,

Dave Nabity

YouTube Direkt

Today, we learned the Fire Union passed the proposed contract and the police management team will still get sizeable raises, the Chief somewhere between $17,000 and $38,000.  In the meantime, the stock market lost 7% – all its gains this year – during the debt ceiling wrangling.  So, while the federal politicians plunder our savings (does anyone even have a savings left?) our local politician, the Mayor, tells us we have to pay fire and police comprable salaries to other cities.  Well, check out what is going on in Milwaukee.  And, you guessed it, Milwaukee has been one of the cities in our array.  See how this works?  Please show up August 9th, 2011 at 1:30PM to Council Chambers for the Public Hearing on the Fire Contract and the second vote on Police raises.  Here is the Milwaukee article:

Gold-Plated Pensions in Milwaukee, TUA /2011

Please join us for an important discussion on the Fire Union Contract.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

6:00PM until 7:30PM

The Thompson Alumni Center

UNO Campus

6705 Dodge Street

Omaha, NE 68182

RSVP on FACEBOOK here,   OR

Email fireunionforum@gmail.com and confirm via emai;.

Toward a More
Perfect Union

By Tristan Bonn
The mayor and the police and firefighter unions are congratulating themselves for agreeing to end spiking –
padding hours to push up the base pay on which a pension is calculated. They ought to be embarrassed, not triumphant.

Spiking produced the spectacle of some police officers and firefighters retiring with pensions at or above the base pay they received for most of their working lives. It was never spelled out in a contract. Neither politicians nor union members wanted to be “on the record” supporting such a violation of the public trust. It was done with a nod and a wink, out of public sight. Taxpayers all over the country have been caught unaware by such manipulations. By the time they figured out what was going on, it was too late to act.

Historically, American policing (and to a lesser and more recent extent, firefighting) has been all about trying to raise the level of professionalism. Dating back to the “spoils system,” where key policing positions were doled out to the victorious politician’s family and friends as payback for political support, policing and politics have been a bad mix.  By the 1960’s, public employees were granted the authority to organize for the purpose of becoming more professional. However, despite the warnings of President Franklin Roosevelt and others that collective bargaining was not appropriate in the public sector because the interest of the taxpayer was not safeguarded, unions found accommodating politicians willing to negotiate overly generous pay, benefits, and pensions – including turning a blind eye toward spiking – in return for campaign donations and volunteers, and votes delivered on election day.

I have heard people say it’s “legal” to spike your salary. That’s what Wall Street con artists say about their junk
bonds or credit default swaps – they’re “legal,” they don’t violate the letter of the law. We get angry at public employee unions (and the spineless politicians who accommodate them) for the same reason we get angry at financial wheeler-dealers – they cheat the system.  Which is to say they cheat people – investors in the private sector, taxpayers in the public sector. Just because a contract does not close a loophole doesn’t mean it is right to use that loophole!  That’s why we call it a LOOPHOLE!  Professionals with integrity don’t jack the system.  The fact that unions have agreed to stop doing something they shouldn’t have been doing in the first place is not really much to celebrate, if you ask me.

Over these past forty or fifty years, union bases within public service departments have calcified into political leviathans. The police and fire unions curry great favor with politicos and cause any comers to quake in their boots if they dare cross them.  As Omaha has learned, once this machine has become entrenched in your community, it is nearly impossible to reform the system.

And so here we are – in California, New Jersey, Illinois (click on Illinois to check out more pensions) and other places around the country as well as Omaha, Nebraska.  But it cannot last.

The end of spiking, while welcome, is only the beginning of the revisions needed to bring fairness to taxpayers when it comes to police and firefighter contracts.  The question for unions is: Are you going to be the automaker’s union in Detroit and destroy your host city, or are you going to be a smart union, like Southwest Airlines, and help your employer succeed?  Because one thing is for sure, you can’t keep biting the hand that feeds you.

A TRUE SUMMIT:

A Review of the

Platte Institute’s Education Summit

By Tristan Bonn

Tuesday, Platte Institute for Economic Research held its “2011 Education Summit” at the Scott Conference Center on the UNO South Campus.  The variety of speakers – ideologically, geographically, and politically – was widespread.  Noticeable enough for John Cavanaugh, Executive Director of “Building Bright Futures” and one of the day’s presenters to call it a, “true summit, like the meeting of Regan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik,” which drew a laugh.  And while it is true that the topic of education reform brought out much passion and a few emotions, it was by far a very thorough, thoughtful, and professional discussion of a difficult topic.

As a lifelong independent, but not necessarily a moderate, I care much less about ideology and more about “what works.”  Give me good solutions and spare the rhetoric any day.  Thankfully, that is what this summit presented:  a number of good ideas, a variety of approaches, and lots of facts and data – that’s what I want.  While this information does not necessarily make some of the decisions needed to be made by policy makers easier, it cuts through so much of the politics, posturing, and hyperbole that has frozen so many of our important problem-solving processes at local, state, and federal levels.

With all due respect to both sides, the arguments for reform shaped up basically this way:  one side is in favor of a more holistic approach, one that deals with the consequences of poverty, to education reform.  They posit that you cannot solve education reform without first addressing how kids present in a classroom.  In this regard, teachers cannot be as effective until serious distractions caused by poverty are removed.  That is a child must be fed, healthy, and show up to school with the proper early childhood education in order to be able to learn.  Teachers are dedicated professionals, but they cannot be responsible for all of society’s ills.

The other side responds by saying – you have to be able to find ways to teach kids even under these new and more difficult circumstances.  Teachers need to be more innovative and responsive to these changes in the schools and teachers must be held accountable for their performance. The best way to do this is by offering choice and incentivizing teachers’ performance based on their demonstrated results.  Reintroducing free market principles to the schools will address performance problems for both teachers and students.

The holistic approach has been criticized as more social engineering, a power grab, and another way for teachers unions to protect their poor performing teachers.  The market based approach has been attacked for its oversimplification, short-term gains, and attacks on teachers.  Obviously, more devoted participants probably would disagree with even this characterization, but I think I am a fairly neutral observer on this topic.

In fact, to me, the most obvious response to the information presented was – well, why not do both.  I mean removing the barriers to learning presented by poverty is a good long-term goal.  And, I think everyone would agree that using a “community engagement” approach would produce better overall results.  I also think that most people would agree that teachers are critical to the success of schools and they must be held accountable for their performance (every other job I can think of requires this).  If tests and salary incentives cause better teaching results, then we should try it.  If competition provided by vouchers and charter schools help, then let’s do that too.  This is way too big of a problem not to throw everything we have, or, at least everything we can afford, at it.

In all fairness, teachers have to answer for their work – every other working person does and if there is one place where accountability is most important, it is in schools.  On the other hand, the market alone can’t solve all problems.  “The market” is no more predictable than human behavior, so to simply “let the market” decide is too oversimplified. But, using some very directed market-based principles combined with some holistic approaches to the new school reality seems to me to be a way to move forward.

One more striking fact about the summit: the problems presented by rural school populations and the introduction of virtual schools are a match made in schoolyard heaven.  I cannot think of a more perfect solution to the very real and big (and by big, we Nebraskans know we are talking about a lot of wide open space) problem this presents for a big state with a small population.

All in all, it was a great summit and kudos to the Platte Institute for bringing together a truly non-partisan presentation of ideas.  A place where people with very different views could express themselves and learn from each other in pursuit of a sensible solution.  Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Judges Get to Decide Legitimate Options for Whistle Blowers

Whistle blowers, make sure you tell your story to someone drawing a paycheck from a traditional media outlet. A judge has ruled that telling your story to Dave Nabity does not merit whistle-blower protection, and the Nebraska Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal of that ruling.

That’s astounding. And chilling.

Nabity and the organization he founded, OmahaAlliance.com, have been sued for slander by the president of the Omaha fire fighters union. At issue are allegations Nabity made on live radio about personnel procedures in the fire department that, if true, would be serious violations of the public trust.

Nabity says the allegations are based on information provided by people with knowledge of the situation who want to see such behavior stopped, but want to remain anonymous for fear of retribution by the union.

If Nabity is wrong he deserves to be publicly scalded, but the issue here is whether judges can limit the flow of public information based on their political sensibilities.

Forty years ago there was a national movement to let journalists refuse to identify confidential sources. One argument for so-called shield laws is that they allow misdeeds in government to come to light. Insiders won’t reveal what’s really happening unless they can remain anonymous.

Shield laws are often described as protection for journalists, but they really are protection for whistle blowers. The journalist already is known to those on whom the whistle is being blown. The whistle blower is the one who needs protection.

Nebraska enacted a shield law in 1973 called the Free Flow of Information Act. The key provision says:

No person engaged in disseminating news or other information to the public shall be required to disclose the source of any information obtained in the gathering, receiving, or processing of information for any medium of communication to the public.

The “findings” section says:

The policy of the State of Nebraska is to insure the free flow of news and other information to the public, and that those who disseminate information to the public shall not be inhibited by governmental restraint or sanction but rather shall be encouraged to disseminate news or other information vigorously so that the public may be fully informed.

The section defining terms says:

Person shall mean any individual, partnership, limited liability company, corporation, association, or other legal entity. (emphasis added)

In the Nabity case, the judge said the language of the Act was “ambiguous,” but it’s actually very clear.

The Nebraska Legislature saw the value of extending the shield law to any disseminator of information to the public. From colonial revolutionary pamphleteers to Internet bloggers, as the U.S. Supreme Court has noted in numerous cases, Americans draw from a variety of sources in the free flow of information, not just from traditional journalists.

The judge said Nabity had to disclose his sources because his dissemination of information was “political” rather than “journalistic.”

The Act does not require that speech be “journalistic.” Nor does it give judges authority to make political evaluations of the speech at issue. That would be ridiculously unconstitutional.

Because the Act applies to any disseminator of information to the public, the question becomes: How many press conferences and newspaper columns are necessary for Nabity to qualify as a disseminator of information to the public? In the last 18 months, Nabity and OmahaAlliance.com have had more than 80 interactions with the public.

If a person calls a press conference and the media show up, or if he is invited to the microphone of the legacy radio station that is number one in the market, that means he is recognized as someone engaged in disseminating information to the public. The World-Herald would not contact Nabity for news stories or allow him space in its editorial pages unless it considered him someone disseminating information to the public.

Certainly information conveyed by Nabity has a political aspect, but that’s irrelevant. What matters is that some whistle blowers in government consider Nabity the best option for getting information to the public.

But apparently judges now get to decide whether some voices in the public conversation are too “political” to be legitimate options for whistle blowers.