Outside counsel hired for Fire Dept negotiations

[mugofbeer]

Sounds like this conspiracy theory is dead.......

[kevinpate]

or maybe it's just hiding in the shadows of the black helios for a spell

[CaptainCouch]

As the paper has mentioned in passing, the Police Union folded at the mere prospect of having to deal with outside attorneys. The prospect of blowing $100,000 to fight MAPS 3 didn't deter the Union, but the City hires outside counsel, and suddenly they're settling with the City? Seems like money well spent to me.

[Wambo36]

As the paper has mentioned in passing, the Police Union folded at the mere prospect of having to deal with outside attorneys. The prospect of blowing $100,000 to fight MAPS 3 didn't deter the Union, but the City hires outside counsel, and suddenly they're settling with the City? Seems like money well spent to me.

The police settled on last years contract. The outside counsel was brought in to handle this years negotiations. Not exactly "folding at the mere prospect". I've come to the conclusion that your moniker isn't code for anything. If it was you would certainly be more informed.

Steve maybe you can clear something up. The story in the paper said they were getting two attorneys @ $225 per hour apiece. The contract shown on the news showed one attorney @ $225 per hour and one attorney @ $425 per hour. I know it's not your story but maybe you could find out which it is.

[okcsmokeandfire]

The police settled on last years contract. The outside counsel was brought in to handle this years negotiations. Not exactly "folding at the mere prospect". I've come to the conclusion that your moniker isn't code for anything. If it was you would certainly be more informed.

Steve maybe you can clear something up. The story in the paper said they were getting two attorneys @ $225 per hour apiece. The contract shown on the news showed one attorney @ $225 per hour and one attorney @ $425 per hour. I know it's not your story but maybe you could find out which it is.

This may be a blessing in disguise, the city hiring outside attorneys for negotiations. Hopefully, they are familiar with Fire and Police Arbitration Act.
Hopefully, they know what bargaining in "good faith" is and not "stonewalling" like what we have come to expect from the city for years.

It does not matter who the city has representing them. There are still rules and laws related to Collective Bargaining that have to be abided by both parties. We have been abiding by our set of rules, yet the city has chosen not to abide by their set. Hopefully, we can come to an agreement. One that is give and take, and not just take on the part of the city.
We will see. I am optimistic.

[andy157]

[/COLOR]

I have to disagree on this one, Labor Law is a very specialized field and any professional would not take this as an insult, most likely they would take this as an opportunity to learn.

Your right, Labor Law in general is a very specialized field. Some areas of that field are very complicated. Negotiating a contract is pretty darn simple, it's diffently not rocket science. The Firefighters have bargained numerous contracts without an attorney sitting on their side of the table.

I won't mention names, but I can tell you the City has at least 2 labor attorneys that are as good as anyone, including the attorney from M&T, and I say that meaning no disrepect to him, he is damn good.

IMO 90% of the problems at the bargaining table between the Firefighters and the City stem from the City's negotiators not having the authority to enter into a tentitive agreement. Thats not their vault, it's the Manager and Councils fault. They're put into the position of nothing more than a messenger. That causes the message to get miscommunicated more times than not.

The City would deny this, in fact they have, but sending a negotiator to bargain a contract who has no authority to enter into a T.A. subject to the Union members ratification, and Council approval is nothing more than surface bargaining. Which by the way, in it's purist form is illegal, trouble is it's harder to prove.

[andy157]

This may be a blessing in disguise, the city hiring outside attorneys for negotiations. Hopefully, they are familiar with Fire and Police Arbitration Act.
Hopefully, they know what bargaining in "good faith" is and not "stonewalling" like what we have come to expect from the city for years.

It does not matter who the city has representing them. There are still rules and laws related to Collective Bargaining that have to be abided by both parties. We have been abiding by our set of rules, yet the city has chosen not to abide by their set. Hopefully, we can come to an agreement. One that is give and take, and not just take on the part of the city.
We will see. I am optimistic.

Good luck

[Rover]

As an observer only, I must say that the firefighters are really poor at public relations. Most of the postings here and the fact that they seem anti progress in this city makes them very hard to support. Their attitude seems really bitter and harsh and then they wonder why they can't get public support.

[okcsmokeandfire]

As an observer only, I must say that the firefighters are really poor at public relations. Most of the postings here and the fact that they seem anti progress in this city makes them very hard to support. Their attitude seems really bitter and harsh and then they wonder why they can't get public support.

Rover,

We dont mean bitter and harsh, but we have heard the same ole song and dance for 15 plus years. We have had to fight tooth and nail to get a contract every year for that time frame, because they simply dont want to bargain with us. They show up to negotiation meetings and simply dont participate. This is bad faith bargaining and stonewalling. They just show up for the formality, just to say that they were there, nothing more.

You put up with that for a number of years and see how good your attitude is. If the public only knew what went on behind those closed doors, they would be simply be in an uproar with the city.

There is plenty of public support for the fire dept. Those supporters are not typing post on this site. I am sure that they have better things to do with their time.

About the public relations comment, we have had to resort to this site and youtube to get our message out, because we cant get the daily disappointment newspaper, nor the major news channels 4, 5, or 9 to cover our stories without doing a hatchet job on the messages and somehow making us look like the bad guys and the city looking like saints. The only news channel that has given the fire dept a fair shake is channel 25 and they pretty much tell it like it is, no spins one way or the other so far.

I would sure like to see some progress between the city and the fire dept, but I am not holding my breath waiting on it. I am in hopes that this hiring of outside counsel by the city turns out to be a positive. We will have to wait and see.

[Mikemarsh51]

Rover, you need new glasses, as only an observer I think you have missed most of the points trying to be made here. Firefighters have made public safety their number one mission. We do that because it affects our lives as well as those we serve. We are not about a raise as is continuously reported in the paper. Had the city not cheated in arbitration we would have lost. We were awarded the raise because the were disqualified for bad faith bargaining. What is it we are so poor at portraying? Is it that we dont want the services we have worked for and built as some of the best in the nation dismantled? Wow that really makes us look bad huh?

[Redskin 70]

Why does the city hire outside counsel to conduct negotiations, the city legal dept. has over 30 lawyers. Fox 25 will air a story about it at 9 pm tonight.

For the same reason unions hire outside counsel for negotiations! Jim Moore, Doug Vernier, Loren Gibson.................

They hired Tony Puckett right?

[Rover]

I wasn't passing any judgement, but just saying most every post here seems to come across as caustic. I think that the appearance to the public generally is that the firefighters came off too self serving and anti progress on the Maps 3 issue. Whether that is how the firefighters feel I can't say...just saying how it appears. You guys need a good PR coach, not more lawyers. Just telling you what it appears from the outside.

[Steve]

Rover, you're not totally wrong. Once upon a time they had Mark Schwartz as a moderating voice while on council, and as a wise counsel afterwards. Sadly, Mark passed away a year ago and yeah, it shows.

[Mikemarsh51]

Redskin70, Are you serious? We dont have a legal department! We have to hire a lawyer. We dont have a large full time legal staff and are hiring more.

Rover, it sure wouldnt hurt you to educate yourself. Why dont you ask a firefighter what's going on. Self serving! You have got to be kidding! Hey why dont you check out what our fair city fathers are doing now about the business owners who are located in the proposed core to shore area. I guess your going to say the are just being self serving while they fight the city's attempts to enforce emminant domain.

Why doesnt the city just hire a labor lawyer for a 1 year contract, that person could be used to settle these issues and then work on other projects. The money they are going to spend would fund 2 firefighter positions for a full year. More than the somewhere around 200 hours of labor thier going to pay for. I shouldnt be surprised at all after they paid $40,000.00 for someone to tell them where to put the furniture at 420 west Main.

[mugofbeer]

Redskin70, Are you serious? We dont have a legal department! We have to hire a lawyer. We dont have a large full time legal staff and are hiring more.

Rover, it sure wouldnt hurt you to educate yourself. Why dont you ask a firefighter what's going on. Self serving! You have got to be kidding! Hey why dont you check out what our fair city fathers are doing now about the business owners who are located in the proposed core to shore area. I guess your going to say the are just being self serving while they fight the city's attempts to enforce emminant domain.

Ooooh! A rather caustic reply!

[okcsmokeandfire]

I wasn't passing any judgement, but just saying most every post here seems to come across as caustic. I think that the appearance to the public generally is that the firefighters came off too self serving and anti progress on the Maps 3 issue. Whether that is how the firefighters feel I can't say...just saying how it appears. You guys need a good PR coach, not more lawyers. Just telling you what it appears from the outside.

I can appreciate your honesty and I hear what you are saying.
Maybe we do need a PR coach. I think that we have been most concerned
with trying to get the message of what is going on behind closed doors out.
I dont know whether it comes across as caustic or not.

If we had more concerned citizens such as yourself on this site, that were sincere in trying to help the situation instead of escalate it, I think that all parties would be better served.

Most all of the parties on this site are far from neutral, they range from to hell with the city all the way to hell with fire department.
There doesnt seem to be a whole lot of in betweeners.

Probably the most aggravating thing on this topic, is that you have some posters who have no idea what it takes to run a fire/ems dept and yet they have opinions that are plenty on here about how we could do the job more efficient. Really???

We cut all the fat off the fire dept. per say 10 years ago. We have been doing a whole lot more with a whole lot less personnel since 1999.
The only thing to do now is to reduce services that are provided and to close fire stations. Hope, its not the station in your area of town. Sorry, got off the subject.

[mugofbeer]

I can appreciate your honesty and I hear what you are saying.
Maybe we do need a PR coach. I think that we have been most concerned
with trying to get the message of what is going on behind closed doors out.
I dont know whether it comes across as caustic or not.

If we had more concerned citizens such as yourself on this site, that were sincere in trying to help the situation instead of escalate it, I think that all parties would be better served.

Most all of the parties on this site are far from neutral, they range from to hell with the city all the way to hell with fire department.
There doesnt seem to be a whole lot of in betweeners.

Probably the most aggravating thing on this topic, is that you have some posters who have no idea what it takes to run a fire/ems dept and yet they have opinions that are plenty on here about how we could do the job more efficient. Really???

We cut all the fat off the fire dept. per say 10 years ago. We have been doing a whole lot more with a whole lot less personnel since 1999.
The only thing to do now is to reduce services that are provided and to close fire stations. Hope, its not the station in your area of town. Sorry, got off the subject.

I think you make a lot of good points in your post. If most fire-related posters were considerate and polite as you are, the conversation would have been far less caustic.

The aggrivating thing for the other side is that the firemen have an extremely hard time understanding that the city's funding negotiations with them and MAPS are two totally separate issues. I understand there may have been comments made that led the police/fire folks to believe MAPS would address their concerns but from what I could see it was purely a misunderstanding of what was meant by the remarks - or a misrepresentation of the remarks. I don't know.

Police and fire funding come out of the city's budget. The budget of OKC is under strain as it is in most every city in the US due to the recession. Therefore, city's are looking for ways to cut budgets. I don't have the answer to this problem but it happens every time a community sees a revenue slowdown. I guess the unions should go out and encourage everyone to buy new cars and furniture and appliances in OKC stores to generate some additional tax revenue.

MAPS is a completely different issue and has nothing to do with operating budgets until the new facilities are built. MAPS is a pay-as-you-go investment in our city with, among many other things, is the hope that return on the investment will provide the city with new tax revenue. The new tax revenue can and should, in part, go to police and fire. MAPS is a temporary tax and you can't nor should you expect new permanent funding to come from a temporary tax. On the same page, when the bond issue was approved a few years back, you couldn't expect permanent funding to come from that, either.

When you see the unions go negative on MAPS and attempt to sabotage the entire MAPS effort, it was not just frusterating but anger-causing. There have been few things in my mind that I have seen recently that was as short-sighted and clearly an incident of shooting themselves in the foot than the firemen's union opposition to MAPS.

[Rover]

All of us, corporate, public, etc. are facing careful cuts and I appreciate that there is a limit to cutting before vital services are in danger. However, when the argument is framed and it sounds like "pay us more or you will be injured" it comes across as mafia like....if you don't pay then your house will just get burned down. I know that is not what is meant, but I think people are sensitive when it sounds like strong-arming. On the maps issue it came across as "give us what we want or we will fight to keep good things from happening to this city.

With some re-framing of the issues and offering a more sensitive approach to the public discussion I think the public would be much more inclined to ask their council people to support the best contract they can. If you would have approached maps in a more supportive way and got in front of the issue instead of the position you were in I think the public would be much more supportive. It is almost always better to be for something than against. Be more for increased safety and less about more danger. Impress on the public how we need to provide top notch services to attract the kinds of businesses and workers we want to grow this economy. Offer statistics about how higher level public services, including firefighting, are economic engines, not a public expense. Start your own Maps for A Safe Future and see if it gains traction. There are a thousand positive things you stand for you can project.

Just my humble opinion.

[Larry OKC]

...MAPS is a completely different issue and has nothing to do with operating budgets until the new facilities are built. MAPS is a pay-as-you-go investment in our city with, among many other things, is the hope that return on the investment will provide the city with new tax revenue. The new tax revenue can and should, in part, go to police and fire. MAPS is a temporary tax and you can’t nor should you expect new permanent funding to come from a temporary tax. On the same page, when the bond issue was approved a few years back, you couldn’t expect permanent funding to come from that, either....

I agree completely with the last part (you shouldn’t use a temporary tax to fund perm positions).

I don’t personally have a dog in this fight (no friend or family member is a P.S. employee) but this is what I have gathered.

The “rising tide lifts all boats” element of your posts sounds great in theory and indeed, that is what the City promised during the first couple of MAPS (support MAPS, tax revenue will increase and we will address staffing issues). The sad part is, the City has done nothing to address staffing issues over the years yet tax revenues have definitely increased. MAPS averaged $60M/year. MAPS for Kids averaged $74M/year and MAPS 3 is projected to average $100M/year.

The yearly City budget reports reflect staffing levels are less than they were several years ago. The City’s own consultants/studies show that that the Police Dept is understaffed 277 police officers (and with the upcoming 12% budget cuts could mean an additional 240 cut). Not sure what the staffing level is for Fire, but the 12% cuts could mean a cut of 140 positions. (From a couple of articles in this weeks The City Sentinel).

This is all on top of the recent cuts (actually just the non-filling of vacant positions) announced recently. From what I have gathered, the fire/police said, “Uhhh, that’s what you said before and it didn’t happen, why should we believe you this time?” Thus, the “Not this MAPS”.

Budgets and the like are sometimes up and sometimes down. Even though revenues rose, there were budget shortfalls. These are the numbers I foound from the City’s website (City of Oklahoma City) starting at the Budget & Finance tab:

2002 FY = $10M shortfall

2003 FY = $12 to 19.1M anticipated shortfall

“All General Fund departments had to cut budgets. Police and Fire were required to cut 2% of their budgets and the other General Fund departments had to propose budget cuts of 11% – the biggest reductions we’ve had in years.”

“Our budgets are always tight due to employee costs – even when revenues were growing 5% a year. But the level of cuts necessary next year will affect our core services – parks, animal control, street maintenance and public safety. All these services depend on workers.”

2004 FY = ???

2005 FY = $210M Surplus (where did the money go?)

2006 FY = $17.88M Surplus

“Programs have been expanded and positions have been added only in critical areas where reductions in past fiscal years have negatively impacted the ability to provide services.”

So we were playing catch-up again.

2007 FY = $1.3M Shortfall
“... sales tax, the City’s largest revenue source, growing at about six percent”

But since there was an overall shortfall, expenses exceeded growth.

2008 FY (then the economy hit...)

“... revenue growth began SLOWING from the trends seen in the past two fiscal years. Sales tax, the City’s largest source of revenue grew at 3.95%, which is BELOW NORMAL GROWTH trends. Projections for FY 2009 are for continued LOWER LEVELS OF REVENUE GROWTH. This trend, along with anticipated growth in expenditures to continue current service levels, has limited the City’s ability to increase services. Expenditure growth in the budget is primarily related to fuel costs, maintenance contracts for new public safety technologies, and personnel related costs.”

“Although the number of City staff has increased in the past few years, we are still operating BELOW 1994 STAFFING LEVELS.”

[rcjunkie]

Redskin70, Are you serious? We dont have a legal department! We have to hire a lawyer. We dont have a large full time legal staff and are hiring more.

Rover, it sure wouldnt hurt you to educate yourself. Why dont you ask a firefighter what's going on. Self serving! You have got to be kidding! Hey why dont you check out what our fair city fathers are doing now about the business owners who are located in the proposed core to shore area. I guess your going to say the are just being self serving while they fight the city's attempts to enforce emminant domain.

Why doesnt the city just hire a labor lawyer for a 1 year contract, that person could be used to settle these issues and then work on other projects. The money they are going to spend would fund 2 firefighter positions for a full year. More than the somewhere around 200 hours of labor thier going to pay for. I shouldnt be surprised at all after they paid $40,000.00 for someone to tell them where to put the furniture at 420 west Main.

I haven't posted much lately, but I couldn't hold back on this one. For you to say that $40,000 was paid to just tell them where to put furniture is totally false. To disagree is one thing, to post false information is another.

Take care and be safe!!

[andy157]

For the same reason unions hire outside counsel for negotiations! Jim Moore, Doug Vernier, Loren Gibson.................

They hired Tony Puckett right?

The difference here being that the Unions don't hire outside counsel and have a bunch of full time paid staff attorneys at the same time. If there are not enough staff attorneys to handel the workload, then hire more. If the attorneys currently on staff are not smart enough to handle the job, get rid of them for someone that can. Maybe they should do away with the legal department and contract everything out.

[andy157]

[/COLOR]

I haven't posted much lately, but I couldn't hold back on this one. For you to say that $40,000 was paid to just tell them where to put furniture is totally false. To disagree is one thing, to post false information is another.

Take care and be safe!!

Are you aware of the issue Mike is referring to?

[Mikemarsh51]

Rover, you got to focus, we never said pay us more, never not once!

Junkie, I remember Jim Couch being interviewed about this and he defended it. It was within the last 6 months and the cost was between $30,000.00 and $50,000.00 I just split the middle on this. Andy157 posted it first and I saw Mr. Couch defending it. I will research it and get back to you.

[Kerry]

Why does the city hire outside counsel to conduct negotiations, the city legal dept. has over 30 lawyers. Fox 25 will air a story about it at 9 pm tonight.

Didn't you hire an outside council to negotiate your personal income and benefits? You did if you are a Union memeber. Not only that, but your personal outside council also determined the type of furniture in your place of work.

(for those people that are a little slow - the Union is 'outside council'.

[PennyQuilts]

Redskin70, Are you serious? We dont have a legal department! We have to hire a lawyer. We dont have a large full time legal staff and are hiring more.

Rover, it sure wouldnt hurt you to educate yourself. Why dont you ask a firefighter what's going on. Self serving! You have got to be kidding! Hey why dont you check out what our fair city fathers are doing now about the business owners who are located in the proposed core to shore area. I guess your going to say the are just being self serving while they fight the city's attempts to enforce emminant domain.

Why doesnt the city just hire a labor lawyer for a 1 year contract, that person could be used to settle these issues and then work on other projects. The money they are going to spend would fund 2 firefighter positions for a full year. More than the somewhere around 200 hours of labor thier going to pay for. I shouldnt be surprised at all after they paid $40,000.00 for someone to tell them where to put the furniture at 420 west Main.

I support the FF's. I have a great deal of respect for them and want them to be well treated. That being said, I agree - they have not done well in presenting themselves, publically. Some have but there are a few that are so upset and angry and they seem to expect anyone reading their posts to see the context and know the history. Sorry, Mike, but your post I just quoted is an excellent example of someone who is not helping your position. You don't come across well, especially if someone is not already on your side. I will tend to always give you guys the benefit of the doubt but that sort of talk makes it harder.