In letters sent to Hartford's union leaders, Mayor Pedro Segarra is calling for Hartford's unions to once again give back. The letters were sent to Hartford's bargaining units last week.
Mayor Segarra's letters requested meetings with the various unions to discuss concessions that will also include insurance plan options and changes. Segarra stated that "we must all be part of the solution to bridge our current budget gap". Segarra also referred to Hartford's budget situation as "grim". The Mayor also states that "we once again have to contend with a significant budget deficit, this time one of $7.1 million".
This potentially could be a tough sell for Mayor Segarra after the way concessions were handled by the previous administration. Under former Mayor Perez, several bargaining units found it offensive that they were giving back concessions at the same time that Perez was giving other staffers, including his former Chief of Staff, tens of thousands of dollars in "ESI" bonuses. Several union members I spoke with felt that the bonuses were paid on their backs after they gave their concessions.
Although the concessions may be necessary, there still seems to be plenty of waste in Hartford spending. Areas that Mayor Segarra may want to look at seem pretty obvious and many have been posted here before.
Travel paid for by the city is still an issue. How do we ask city employees to give back while many inside City Hall are still travelling on the taxpayers dime? Take home city vehicles are still a big waste of city funds. A prime example can be seen in the Public Works Department.
After his arrest a few years ago, DPW Supervisor Gennaro Sepulveda had his drivers license suspended for DUI charges. At the time, Hartford's Human Resources Director stated that a drivers license and the need to drive was not necessary for Sepulveda to do his job. Even though a vehicle and license wasn't necessary for Sepulveda, he has once again been given a "take home" city vehicle. Sepulveda does not live in Hartford and commutes to the suburbs in his city vehicle every day.
Another example is one that several people have called complaining about. After Mayor Segarra appointed Sandy Kee-Borges as Corporation Counsel, a decision was made to move the Corporation Counsel's Office from the third floor of City Hall, to the second floor along side the Mayor's Office. The space is currently being renovated for the move. On this one I tend to side with the callers. It is money being spent for renovations that doesn't need to be spent. No dollar amount estimate is available for the renovations at this time.
In this time of electronic communications. it seems to be a waste of time and money. It might be a "nice thing" to have the Mayor and Corporation Counsel close by, the way it used to be, but we can hardly afford frivolous renovations while we may once again be talking about laying employees off.
The millions of dollars being spent on ridiculous appeals needs to also end. Some of them have been outlined here such as the Murtha case, the Secore case, FOI appeals, the Nolan case, and that's only the beginning. In all of these cases, except Nolan, either the Labor Board or Superior Court Judges have already ruled against the City, yet we continue to appeal. And I am pretty confident that the Labor Board decision in the Nolan case will not be favorable to Hartford. In fact, the evidence presented during the hearings for Nolan will most likely open the door for even more losses for Hartford if they refuse to use common sense.
The Union's are only a small part of the solution, leadership at City Hall needs to close the checkbook and control spending except for essential purchases.
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11 comments:
I have several areas where cuts could be made...one of which are the many political aids that Perez hired and still remain on the payroll.It also semed very unseemly that Mayors Perry and Peters have 5 aids each and Perez had close to 30.
They need to cut police overtime, close one or two fire stations that have limited use, get rid of the 311 system, look at combining City and BOE depts that do the same thing, switch from a pension plan to employee contibuted 401 plan, increase the employee paid portion of health benefits and get rid of the dept head vehicles. That would be a start.
Good point Kevin. Let’s take it one step further. When the administration of the PD loses these cases and you account for the losses (Legal fees, back pay, man hours ect..) you are talking a pretty hefty bill for each case at the tax payers’ expense. That is money lost based on grudge, incompetence and poor decision making. Is the administrator held accountable? Is he disciplined? Is he sent to retraining? Officers have or will prevailed in their cases and have already or will received 100’s of thousands of dollars and plenty more is coming. Money is paid to outside corp. counsel, money has been paid to wrongly charged officers, countless hours were spent by HPD employees fighting the case and it is all a total loss to the city tax payers. Somebody is making the wrong decisions. The SBMA makes it clear. Yet nobody is held accountable. Who is making the Murtha decision to appeal? Will they be held accountable? nope. What about Secore? Who is holding this process back? You can’t keep blaming John Rose forever..... These cases are current and active and very predictable. Somebody is freaking them up bad, at the tax payers’ expense.
Anonymous (8:28PM),
I haven't followed all of the Labor Board decisions, but I have seen a lot more losses than I have victories for the City. It might not be right to call them victories, since some very good people have been terminated by the previous vindictive administration.
With that being said, I think Attorney Ramos, who seems to handle most of these claims, is way out of his league when going against the "real" lawyers from the private sector.
I am anxious to get and post the transcripts from the Nolan case and that should prove what I am saying. Witnesses I have spoken with that were called to defend the City's case against Nolan seemed to instead be excellent character witnesses for Chief Nolan.
I'm not sure if the City is forced to defend these awful cases because department heads are terminating employees before discussing them with Corporation Counsel or if the Corporation Counsel's office is just that bad at Labor law. Either way, we could probably have made up the potential deficit if we didn't have John Rose around to create the problems.
With that being said, you are right, John Rose is gone so we no longer have him to blame. From this point on, the Corporation Counsel has the power to end these nonsense cases and save the City, potentially, a ton of money down the road.
Don't forget John Rose might not be there anymore but he hired half of corporation council during his reign.
I'm sure it's still full of like minded incompetent lawyers.
The Council disregarded Rose's advice and Judge Thomas Corradino rendered his decision on February 24, 2010 and agreed with Murtha's claim and awarded Murtha damages that could total $1,019,478.03.
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I have no clue; haven't followed these issues over the years. My prejudice is that our government, particularly at the local level, is pro-union. Can you explain why the Council chose to fight the Murtha case? Is it a matter of anti-cop mindset trumping pro-labor?
Our fiscal problems are not solely a function of public sector unions, but they are a problem. And, people are waking up to it(see below from today's Waterbury Republican).
In defense of our muni guys, the whole union scheme is foisted on them by the State. I believe Burger King has some fine suggestions, and it's simply a matter of time before changes to benefits will have to be made.,.
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DUH OF THE DAY: A new Rasmussen poll finds most Americans have come to realize unionized government workers, be they teachers, police officers, firefighters or rank-and-file pencil-pushers, bean-counters or paper-shufflers, "get higher wages but don't work as hard" as Americans in the private sector. (Just 9 percent thought government employees work harder and 19 percent said they were underpaid relative to the private sector.) We needed a poll for this?
The cith council should really look into the Health and Human Services Division. Evelyn M. is making close sevent-two thousand dollars for taking pictures. Her reward for helping the previous Mayor in his re-election.
Evelyn M is in good company. There's one of the dishonorable former mayor's cronies in Dev Serv doing the same thing AND duplicating another function of M&B. Long live the (Latin) king.
Pleased to see that Council making moves to establish a minimum age for retirement for non-union employees. The current policy should have been scrapped long ago. Now if Pedro can get some cooperation from the union guys...
Lawyer Malloy says he's going to do all he can to prevent cuts to municipalities so they don't have to raise property taxes. But, if I were running a municipality I'd be looking forward in the long run to less state money. The State is broke. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, as reported by Wash. Examinier:
"State government is on track to shed at least 1,200 jobs in January, Gov. Chris Christie said today.
“Whether it will grow beyond that, I don’t know,” he said at a Statehouse press conference. “That’s very much going to be dependent on what the revenue outlook looks like for the state.”
The job cuts include layoffs and attrition, spokesman Michael Drewniak said.
How much do you think unions are going to spend to take Christie out when he runs for reelection? Sky’s the limit, I bet."
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