Top city workers Friday are receiving “longevity payments” for another year despite a mayoral vow to the contrary. But the practice may finally be on its way out, along with a rule that allows assistant police chiefs to retire with pensions nearly $20,000 higher than their salaries.
The Board of Aldermen’s Finance Committee voted to recommend doing away with one of those budget-busting rules at a meeting in City Hall on Wednesday evening. The vote was part of a larger examination of the rules that cover executive management and confidential employees — upper level staffers and support people, who don’t belong to unions.
Those rules will be considered at an upcoming meeting of the Finance Committee. The change to prevent the extra-lucrative police pensions, now approved by the committee, will be voted on at the next meeting of the full Board of Aldermen.
Aldermen will also soon be considering eliminating the practice of “longevity payments,” which award upper-level non-union staffers with an annual bonus based on the number of years they have served. This group of about 40 workers, called “executive management and confidential employees,” comprises top city directors like Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts, as well as secretaries and staffers in the mayor’s office.
When angry union workers stormed the mayor’s office in September and complained about being asked to give up their longevity payments, Mayor John DeStefano told them that he had already done away with the bonuses for his staff.
Turns out that wasn’t true. Top staff will receive their annual payments on Friday.
On Friday, longevity payments will be dispensed as follows to executive management and confidential employees: People employed for between six and nine years will receive a bonus equal to 1 percent of their salaries. For those who have been with the city for between 10 and 20 years, 3 percent. More than 20 years? 4 percent.
Thomas MacMillan Photo
CAO Smuts testifies to the Finance Committee.
CAO Smuts portrayed the payments as the result of a mistake when he appeared before the aldermanic Finance Committee Wednesday evening.
The mistake was caused by a misconception that the mayor could do away with longevity payments unilaterally, Smuts said. While the mayor does have the power to change certain work rules on his own, changing that particular rule requires an ordinance amendment by the Board of Aldermen, Smuts said. By the time the administration realized that, it was too late to get it done before the bonuses were to be given out, on Friday, he said.
“We missed this year,” Smuts said.
When she learned of the coming payments, AFSCME Local 3144 President Cherlyn Poindexter accused the mayor of “doubletalk.”
“He does one thing and he says another,” Poindexter said. Her union, which represents 400 management workers, is one of 13 currently embroiled in tense contract negotiations heading into a tough fiscal year.
“The bottom line is that by rewarding executive management, the mayor contradicts his administration’s own calls for shared sacrifice. While he attempts to eliminate the jobs and services provided by front-line workers, he continues to reward the upper ranks of management who helped manufacture the crisis in which the city of New Haven finds itself,” said Larry Dorman, spokesman for ASCME Council 4, which represents city and Board of Ed employees.
Reached Thursday at an unrelated event, Mayor DeStefano issued a fiery rebuttal. He didn’t portray Friday’s payments as the result of an administrative mistake.
Executive management benefits are supposed to mirror those of Local 3144, he said. However, the non-unionized workers have made a larger sacrifice than those in the union, he argued.
Over the last three years, executive management has gotten one pay increase of 3 percent when Local 3144 got three consecutive raises adding up to 9 percent, the mayor said.
“We have eliminated the defined benefit pension plan for executive management hires, while the management union has got to keep their defined benefit plan,” DeStefano continued. The city increased medical co-pays for executive management, while the management union has “kept theirs at what is.”
“My commitment to do longevity had to do with mirroring an agreement with the management union, which has generally been the case over the years,” DeStefano said. He said because Local 3144 has not given up longevity payments, he will not do so for his own top staff.
“I am going to eliminate longevity for one person in the city — for myself,” DeStefano said.
With a salary of $127,070, the mayor would be due a bonus of 4 percent, or $5,082.80. He said he is giving up that payment “to demonstrate good faith with the intent to eliminate longevity.”
“That said, I find it unfortunate and disturbing that the management union continues to use executive management as some kind of piñata, when they have taken dramatically less pay increases, the elimination of the defined benefit pension plan,” and increased health care payments.
DeStefano spokes in a room where two dozen top city staffers and mayoral aides were working the phones at the Emergency Operations Center underneath 200 Orange St. Many of them had arisen in the wee hours to respond to the aftermath of a major snowstorm.
“All of the executive management people that are in this room today are working without additional compensation,” DeStefano noted. “So I think executive management and confidential employees have led the way in setting examples.”
“I think that there is this attitude of ‘No, the city’s financial condition is not my concern,’” DeStefano added. “Folks continue to say no instead of seriously dealing with the city’s financial problems. It’s going to make it difficult to fix it.”
Poindexter has said her union seeks to sit down with the mayor to discuss cost-cutting ideas, but that communication has broken down.
Pension Reform
The longevity payments come due to the rules enshrined in the Executive Management and Confidential Employees Personnel and Procedures Manual. The removal of the longevity bonuses provision is part of a larger overhaul of the manual, changes that require aldermanic approval. While most of the changes are not time-sensitive (since the window to end longevity payments this year has closed), alderman considered one pressing change on Wednesday.
Asst. Chief Melendez retired with 5K salary, 4K pension.
It’s the provision that recently allowed Asst. Chief Ariel Melendez to retire with a pension of $124,500, when his highest salary had been $105,000 per year. Melendez was the second assistant chief to enjoy such a plush deal, after Stephanie Redding.
The mayor has vowed not to hire any new assistant police chiefs until the rule is changed. Hence the rush to have aldermen approve the change, since the department is down to two of four possible assistant chiefs.
In his testimony to aldermen on Wednesday, Smuts began by explaining how the so-called “Plus One” rule works. According to the aforementioned procedures manual, workers who are promoted out of the police union into executive positions — like assistant chiefs — continue to be covered by some rules that are essentially the same as the rules of the police union. One of these is a provision that calculates pension. Under certain criteria, this provision allows employees to retire with the rate of pay of the next highest rank.
The rule wasn’t really a problem until the Board of Aldermen voted a couple years ago to increase the salary of the police chief, Smuts said. That was done in order to attract better candidates for the job during a time when the city was looking for new leadership to guide the department out of damaging scandals. That pay hike created a big — $45,000 — differential between the assistant police chief salary and the chief’s, and thus a huge “Plus One” payout for those who retire, Smuts said.
“This is something we should have caught and we didn’t catch,” he said.
The changes to the manual on this rule include comprehensive, explicit, “belt and suspenders-type language” that should eradicate “Plus One,” Smuts said.
Too Many Chiefs?
After hearing from Smuts, aldermanic deliberations included a brief discussion of how many assistant police chiefs are really necessary. Downtown Alderwoman Bitsie Clark said that it can depend on the leadership style of a particular chief. Time was, the department had only one or two assistant chiefs, Clark said. Then Chief James Lewis (hired after the increase to the chief’s salary) won approval to have four assistant chiefs.
“It was always funny to me that this guy needed to have so many assistant chiefs,” Clark said. “I’m sorry I voted for four.”
West River Alderman Yusuf Shah said that assistant chiefs can provide necessary supervision to prevent police misconduct. “We don’t want any more Billy Whites.”
The Finance Committee voted unanimously to recommend the changes that will do away with “Plus One.”
The mayor is mistaken when he states that Local 3144 has received raises for the last 3 years totalling 9%. There was no salary increase in 2010. Increases for the last 3 years total 6%.
The mayor is also mistaken when he states that the membership of Local 3144 is covered by a defined benefit pension plan. Approximately 1/3 of the membership of Local 3144 has no retirement benefits at all.