City Unions Take On Charter Amendment

By Jorge Casuso

Feb. 23 -- The City’s employees unions -- led by the powerful Police Officers Association (POA) -- are mounting a campaign against a proposed Charter Amendment that would require the City to give the School District at least $6 million a year, The Lookout has learned.

Warning that the ballot measure would result in decreased City services, the POA, along with the Municipal Employees and Firefighters associations, are poised to raise funds and scour the district’s fiscal records, said Detective Shane Talbot, the president of the police union.

“It seems their approach is robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Talbot said. “We’re one hundred percent behind education, but I don’t think taking money from the general fund is an answer.

“We’re organizing,” Talbot said. “We have a PAC (Political Action Committee), and the other two groups have a PAC… … but I hope it doesn’t get to this point.”

The POA fired the first volley in its campaign on February 3, when its attorneys faxed a public information request to Superintendent John Deasy asking for copies of the district’s financial records, according to a letter obtained through the public records act by The Lookout.

Among the documents requested in the letter are copies of the California Annual Financial Report filed with the State for 2000, 2001 and 2002; copies of the minutes of every School Board meeting since January 1, 2001 and copies of the district’s most recent budget, as well as the currently adopted budget.

The letter -- written by the unions’ attorney Silver, Hadden & Silver on behalf of the POA -- also requests copies of the contracts for each of the district’s employee bargaining units (“including any and all side letters”), a copy of the current salary schedule and the current contract for each full-time and part-time employee, including Deasy.

“If we are going to start making statements, we don’t want to talk out of the air,” Talbot said. “We need to get our head and our hands around some numbers… A closer examination of finances… is a reasonable thing to ask.”

Superintendent Deasy said the district is fully complying with the request, which would result in “anywhere between 700 and 1,000 pages of documents.”

“We’ve corresponded back and forth, and we’re applying the appropriate time to produce the documents,” Deasy said.

A spokesman for the Community for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS), which is sponsoring the measure, said the group was “extremely disappointed that the police are attacking the district and the superintendent.

“They’re not the ones doing this," said Ralph Mechur. "They are certainly not dealing with the proposal.”

Talbot said he hopes the issue of increased City funding to the district -- which usually receives $3 million a year, a total boosted by the City Council to $5.25 million in the current fiscal year -- can be solved without an election battle.

“We’ve talked to them and expressed to them our concerns,” Talbot said. “The battle is better served by everyone getting together and taking it to Sacramento.”

Sponsors of the ballot measure “clearly don’t have an appreciation of how the (City) budget works,” Talbot said. “There is a very, very small discretionary fund that is available. The City is pretty tight. It’s just bad policy.

“The fire and police will probably not take as big a cut" as other City departments, Talbot said, “but there’s no question it will come down to us. We’ve been cutting for so long, we can’t cut anymore pencils and paper and typewriters. It’s now blood and bones.”

Widely viewed as one of the most potent forces in local politics, the POA has helped elect council members for decades and has consistently negotiated what is likely one of the most lucrative contracts in the region, if not the nation.

The firefighters union, which has traditionally followed the POA’s lead, also has negotiated a contract that has likely placed them among the top earning fire departments.

According to an investigation by The Lookout last year, the City of Santa Monica paid more than $6 million in overtime to its 292 police officers and firefighters in 2001, raising the annual salary of nearly half of them to more than $100,000, with one police officer topping $200,000.

Of Santa Monica's 191 sworn police officers, 62 made more than $100,000 in base salary and overtime in calendar year 2001, with 18 making more than $125,000, six more than $150,000 and one officer topping the $200,000 mark thanks to $121,795 in overtime, according figures compiled by the City and gathered by The Lookout under the Freedom of Information Act.

Salaries for the City's firefighters were even higher. Seventy-eight of Santa Monica's 101 firefighters made more than $100,000 in base salary and overtime in 2001, with 26 exceeding $125,000 and six making more than $150,000.

City officials have expressed little or no concern about the rising cost of public safety, saying the City is getting what it pays for and must compete with rising salaries elsewhere.

In fact, the most recent police contract, negotiated in 2002, cost the cash-strapped City about $800,000 more in the current fiscal year.

Under the contract, the City will be contributing an additional $1.1 million into the police retirement fund at a time when such contributions are largely responsible for increasing the City’s budget deficit.

But the POA may be losing some of its clout. While the union’s campaigns against incumbent candidates Christine Emerson Reed and Tony Vazquez helped lead to their defeats in 1990 and 1996, Councilman Bob Holbrook survived the POA’s attacks in 2002 and was reelected to a fourth term.

The POA, which has a track record of supporting education, also was on the losing side of a $300 parcel tax increase narrowly approved by voters last June.

Talbot said the union opposed the measure because there is just so many times the district can go back to ask voters for more funding. Talbet believes voters have reached the point when they will say “enough is enough.”

The union’s campaign came as no surprise to some City officials. In a debate with former mayor Dennis Zane last week, Councilman Michael Feinstein predicted the proposed measure would pit municipal and district employees and warned the district would be “hit.”

“There’s going to be a major hit on the district in terms of exposing bad budget management in the past,” Feinstein warned.

Related Stories:

City to Chamber: Charter Amendment Bad for Santa Monica, Feb. 19, 2004

Zane, Feinstein Face Off Over Proposed Charter Amendment, Feb. 16, 2004

Measure to Force Council Funding for Schools Hits Streets, Feb. 6, 2004

Group Files Measure for Council School Funding, Jan. 7, 2004

New Police Contract Costs City $800,000 in Upcoming Fiscal Year, June 13, 2003