Tonight the Park Ridge City Council will vote (at 7:00 p.m. at City Hall, 505 Butler Place) to either sustain or over-ride Mayor Dave Schmidt’s vetoes of the Illinois Council Of Police and Sheriffs (“ICOPS”) collective bargaining agreement for 32 unionized public safety employees, and raises for 46 salaried non-union City employees. 

We discussed these raises in our 08.23.12 post, “Will August Spending Bring November Taxing?”, so we won’t repeat those arguments here.  The same goes for our 07.25.12 post, “$48,101 Increase Keeps City Wages Spiraling Upward”, questioning the empty-headed “rationale” given by the City’s H.R. Manager – who our since-fired city manager Jim Hock appointed to that position despite the appointee’s lack of H.R. expertise – and the City’s temporary H.R. consultant, other than to remind our readers of their wiseacre comment that “[t]he process of giving pay raises…[has] been happening since before the birth of Christ.”

Hilarious, aren’t they?

Whether any of the 5 aldermen who voted to give those raises in the first place (Alds. Sweeney, DiPietro, Smith, Raspanti and Maloney) will change their minds and join presumptive veto-sustainers Alds. Knight and Mazzuca to provide the 3 votes necessary to sustain either of Schmidt’s vetoes remains to be seen, but we’re not betting the ranch on it.  None of those five have even tried to articulate a compelling reason for those raises, other than such raises seemed like the “fair” thing to do.

Why are they “fair”?

We have no idea, because those aldermen ran into closed session to discuss the raises in secret – ostensibly to keep the information from the ICOPS negotiators but, just as likely, to keep their own constituents in the dark about just how superficial and bereft of actual analysis those closed session discussions were.  That would explain why, when it came time to vote on the raises, none of those aldermen or any City staffers identified any of the performance metrics or other criteria traditionally used to justify raises, such as increased productivity or increased cost savings/profits. 

So what do the taxpayers get from these raises, if not better performance?

As best as we can figure, nothing more than employee longevity: keeping long-time City employees with the City instead of watching them go elsewhere.  But what value does longevity provide the City’s taxpayers if it doesn’t result in quantifiable productivity increases or increased cost savings?

Ald. Sweeney?  Ald. DiPietro? Ald. Smith?  Ald. Raspanti? Ald. Maloney?  Anybody?  Bueller?

Without performance metrics these “negotiations” become just an arbitrary numbers game: the employees propose an arbitrarily big number just so they can compromise it down to something that is still acceptable.  Which might explain why the previous ICOPS contract contained incredible 5% step increases which have been “compromised” down to 2%; and why the previous contract provided for an incredible 29 vacation days – yes, basically 6 weeks! – after 15 years, which ICOPS has now “compromised” down to a mere 20 days after 11 years.

We’ve heard a couple of these aldermen and a few City bureaucrats mumble about keeping up with the cost of living.  Not only is that rationale unrelated to actual value being conferred on the City by its employees, but it also sets a dangerous precedent by effectively making the City the guarantor of its employees’ buying power, since the cost of living is a buying-power metric rather than a productivity one.

If the cost of living is a valid public policy basis for compensation increases when the CPI is at 2%, then shouldn’t it be an equally valid policy basis if/when the CPI goes up to 5%?  Or up to 10%?  Is that really sound management?

At the August 20th Council meeting, Ald. Knight indicated that he would not support any proposed increase in compensation until the City did a comprehensive review of its pay practices and salary structure.  He emphasized his frustration with the City’s practice of one-off, piecemeal compensation decision-making that ignores the inter-relationship of these compensation increases and their impact on the City’s overall financial position.

That’s exactly right – although the blank and downcast looks on the faces of most of the other folks around The Horseshoe when Knight said it suggests that those other folks lack the recognition and/or the will to see and act on such a fiscally-sound principle, especially when they appear motivated more by a desire to be liked than by the desire to do what’s right for the City as a whole.

If tonight’s votes over-ride Schmidt’s vetoes, that will be a sure sign that taxpayers can expect the City to keep chasing its own tail while bureaucrats and aldermen continue their practice of what amounts to giving arbitrary “gifts” to City employees – money and benefits unrelated to any additional value being conferred on the City or its taxpayers.

And that will also be a sign that the City’s finances will continue on life-support until a substantial tax increase becomes inevitable, perhaps as early as this November.

UPDATE (09.18.12)  The Council over-rode Schmidt’s veto of the salaried employees’ raises by a vote of 5 (Alds. Sweeney, DiPietro, Smith, Raspanti and Maloney) to 2 (Alds. Knight and Mazzuca), after Sweeney donned the mantle of advocate for those salaried employees because, as he explained it, they needed one due to their not being represented by a union.    

But when it came to the ICOPS contract, Sweeney turned on a dime and voted with Knight and Mazzuca to achieve the 3 votes needed to sustain the veto – but only after he predicted that sustaining the veto would wreak an Armegeddon on the City, including unfair labor practice charges, union picketing, other unionized employees refusing to cross picket lines, and the effective shut-down of City government.  

If Sweeney truly believes all those things actually will happen from Schmidt’s veto being sustained, then his vote to sustain the veto would appear to be the single most irresponsible thing any alderman or mayor has done over the past 20 years…and THAT’s saying something! 

We’ll be writing more about this in tomorrow’s post, so stay tuned.

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