Melissa Bailey Photo
A gubernatorial candidate picked the wrong time to visit Louis’ Lunch.
When it comes to the high cost of labor contracts, Tom Foley feels John DeStefano’s pain.
At least that’s what the Republican candidate for governor (pictured) signaled in a campaign stop in New Haven Monday. Searching for ways to save cities money, Foley said the state should take a look at a state law mandating binding arbitration for municipal unions.
Foley made the remarks on Crown Street, just two weeks before he faces Democratic candidate Dan Malloy at the polls. Foley held an impromptu press conference on the sidewalk near 261 Crown St., where he had hoped to grab a bite at Louis’ Lunch. The legendary burger joint is closed on Mondays, so he went burger-less.
Foley said the issue came up in a breakfast meeting last week with Mayor John DeStefano about a range of priorities for New Haven. Foley met at Yale President Rick Levin’s Hillhouse Avenue residence with the mayor as well as local business leaders.
Foley said he made a commitment to “better communication” with cities and towns and to help them reduce costs, if he’s elected.
“A lot of the mandates that the state legislature puts on cities and towns drive up their costs,” he said. “We want to look at all of those” to see where cities can get relief.
On the top of the list: “mandatory binding arbitration.” By state law, municipal union contracts are sent to a panel of arbitrators when the two sides can’t agree after a certain time period. Arbitrators go through each portion of a contract — like pay, pensions, benefits — and then choose either labor’s or management’s proposals, all or nothing. In exchange for the requirement that municipal union contracts be subject to mandatory binding arbitration, public employees are not allowed to strike.
Connecticut mayors have complained for years that the system unfairly saddles them with expensive contracts they can’t afford to pay because arbitrators too often side with union. Some have argued that it allows unions to hold out for too-generous terms. Others argue that binding arbitration offers a needed and fair way to avoid strikes that cripple public services. In New Haven, a dispute between City Hall and its school custodians went to binding arbitration in August.
“We need to look at the mandatory binding arbitration mandate and make sure that it’s a level playing field between cities and towns and the service providers in those towns,” Foley said
“People have told me that that was put into effect for a good reason, and that was to avoid strikes. If it avoids strikes, that’s probably a good thing. I haven’t heard of one union leader who wanted it changed, and I haven’t run into one city or town person that didn’t want it changed.
“I think we need to look at it and make sure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, which is to avoid strikes, but to provide a level playing field for negotiations between cities and towns and their employees.”
Foley has previously called for repealing binding arbitration in state union contract negotiations as well as in teacher union contracts.
Later Monday afternoon, Foley said he still in principle likes the idea of removing a state mandate requiring local binding arbitration: “Why is the state telling cities and towns what to do? If binding arbitration is in their interests, they should do it on their own … I would prefer that cities were choosing on their own to be bound by binding arbitration. It prevents strikes.” But he said if that mandate remains, he’d like to see it modified.
In her 2009 budget, Gov. M. Jodi Rell proposed suspending binding arbitration for two years. The initiative would have created a wage-freeze: when a municipal union’s contract expired, it would have been frozen until 2011. Democrats declared the idea “dead on arrival.” The proposal went nowhere.
Foley said that at last week’s meeting with DeStefano he also talked about supporting the city’s school reform effort and various projects which the state is involved in. For example, he said he’d support the mayor’s quest to build “transit-oriented” development around Union Station. And he reiterated his support for allowing cities to create their own “entertainment districts” so they could tax downtown bars.
Asked about binding arbitration Monday, Mayor DeStefano said he’s not looking to eliminate binding arbitration, but to make it fairer for cities. He said he’d like to see two specific changes: A greater weighting allowed for a city’s “ability to pay” a proposed contract, including its long-term pension and health-care liabilities. And a new system for picking the third of three arbitrators on the panels.
Right now unions pick one arbitrator, government the second, and they jointly agree on a third. “It creates a system where if you rule with one side or the other, you risk never getting picked again,” DeStefano said. He suggested instead creating a pool of retired judges to serve as third arbitrators.
Foley suggested the third arbitrator come from the American Arbitration Association, not from a pool of “Hartford insiders.”
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy said Monday he doesn’t see a need to change the system. He emphasized that binding arbitration plays a vital role in Connecticut: “I don’t want” to be governor “in a state where policemen, firefighters, nurses and teachers” regularly go on strike to settle disputes as they did before mandatory binding arbitration became law in municipal contract disputes.
He said that recently history has shown that mandatory arbitration decisions generally match the decisions reached without arbitration, that the panels often side with governments. He also questioned the need to require that retired judges serve as third arbitrators; he said he’d be “open” to hearing arguments for including them as potential participants.
“I’m not advocating a Connecticut where the way you resolve public service disputes is on the picket line and the denial of services to people,” Malloy said.
Not sure where I stand on this, but do think it's important to point out that Stamford's mill rate is 17.17, whereas New Haven's is 43.9.
http://www.cityofstamford.org/content/25/52/131/144/152/790/798.aspx
http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/assessor/index.asp
So the taxes on a $350,000 house in Stamford are well less than half of what we pay in New Haven.
A big question for Governor Malloy, once he wins, will be what if anything he proposes to do about the gross inequities for middle-class people living in New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, Meriden, etc.
Why are we being punished as we try to hold down the proverbial fort? We get stuck with dealing with the crime and poverty, and double the property taxes?
Obviously that ain't right.
However voters shouldn't fool themselves into thinking that a Republican governor would ever help on this issue. The answer for the moment is a Governor Malloy. Let's hope he'll do the right thing.