- I REPORT, YOU DECIDE. By Barry Levinson
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BARRY LEVINSON
This is my first opportunity to compare an excellent law, the CostaMesa Ordinance on Civic Openness in Negotiations (C.O.I.N.) vs. theFullerton Draft C.O.I.N Ordinance, which can be passed into law by avote of our city council on Tuesday, June 17th 2014.
Costa Mesa’s Civic Openness in Negotiations ordinance was
designed to make public employee salary and benefit negotiations
open and transparent to the public and to all members of the city
council as well.
First, the Costa Mesa ordinance makes it clear that “the city shall
have prepared on its behalf, by an independent auditor, …. a
study and supplemental data upon which the study is based,
determining the fiscal impacts attributed to each term and condition of
employment.”
More importantly “the above report and findings of the independent
auditor shall be completed and made available for review by the city
council and the public at least thirty days before consideration by the
city council of an initial meet and confer proposal to be presented
to any recognized employee organization regarding negotiation
of an amended, extended, successor, or original memorandum of
understanding.”
Finally, “the above report shall be regularly updated by the
independent auditor to itemize the costs and the funded and
unfunded actuarial liability which would or may result form adoption or
acceptance of each meet and confer proposal.”
The draft Fullerton C.O.I.N. ordinance includes none of the above
specific steps to ensure the public is being kept informed with
accurate and timely data and information.
What does our draft ordinance include? It includes the following:
“Staff shall prepare an annual analysis of cost and liabilities related to
each Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between a recognized
employee association and the city of Fullerton …”. “The annual fiscal
analysis shall be submitted to the City’s independent auditor during
the course of the annual City financial audit.”
Please notice ladies and gentlemen that this audit takes place
annually, probably after the conclusion and the signing of the labor
agreements. Learning of an error after a 3 or 5-year agreement has
been signed, sealed and delivered is meaningless. How convenient
for all city employees that City Manager Joe Felz and staff would
rewrite this ordinance in this fashion. The auditing required under
the Fullerton Draft Ordinance is a waste of money because it is not
completed on a timely basis.
Second, the Fullerton draft excludes the Report Format, which
provides the framework and necessary detail to understand the
impacts of various items in the proposals.
Third, if the two items above do not derail the true purpose of
C.O.I.N. then a simple majority of the council can do away with the
requirement to have an independent negotiator. This part of the draft
ordinance is ridiculous on its face. You take a cornerstone of the
concept of C.O.I.N. and you make it optional with the vote of 3 out of
5 members of the council. Section B.1 entitled Principal Negotiator,
states “The requirement for an outside negotiator may be waived by a
majority vote of City Council.”
Fullerton city leaders have taken an open, fair and effective law for all
parties and made it into a paper tiger.
This is my first review of the Fullerton C.O.I.N. draft ordinance and
you can see by the length of this critique that the two ordinances
have far more differences than key points in common. In fact, I would
be hard pressed to see any of the Costa Mesa key points being
brought forward to our Fullerton ordinance. Based on all the above
facts, it would not be far from the truth to state that our Fullerton
ordinance literally guts the effectiveness of the Costa Mesa law.
My recommendation is that we throw out this draft in its entirety. We
start again with the Costa Mesa Ordinance as our draft ordinance as
originally brought before this council some 7 months ago by Council
member Whitaker. If any council members want to change any of
the Costa Mesa requirements they should have documented valid
reasons why their change would be for the better and each change
should be voted on separately by our council.
In my humble opinion, the Costa Mesa Civic Openness in
Negotiations Ordinance is an excellent law. The only fault that some
may find with it (certainly not me) is that it will actually accomplish its
proclaimed purpose.—BARRY LEVINSON
#1 by Rudy on June 17, 2014 - 4:58 pm
Here is Barry’s well written response from Jack Deans site and I quote:
Mr. Paden states that he has some issues with the current version of C.O.I.N proposed by the City of Fullerton. Yet, I must take exception to two points he makes in his last paragraph. First he states as follows: “To be sure, the proposed Fullerton COIN Act does represent an improvement in the current process of negotiating pay and benefits for public employees.” I disagree with his conclusion that the proposed Fullerton C.O.I.N. ordinance represents an improvement in the current process of negotiating pay and benefits for public employees based on all the reasons I gave in my article on C.O.I.N. posted earlier. Most if not almost all of the specific language that ensures that the public receives timely and accurate information about all the terms and conditions of the proposals are missing from the Fullerton version. Mr. Paden mentioned that an independent negotiator was not required if a significant change to an MOU has not occurred. But what he did not mention is that the Fullerton version allows the city council to waive the requirement to have an independent negotiator in all instances with a simple majority vote. Without this key provision, a fair and objective negotiating process is basically impossible. To have a law that implies to the public that an open and transparent negotiating process has been put into place, without that truly being the case, only serves to fool or mislead the public.
Council Member Whitaker’s eloquent remarks in response to my article on C.O.I.N. are restated as follows: “Barry; A very good summary of the fraudulent “reform” which is being plated up for tomorrow’s meeting. During the last campaign, nearly every candidate professed to support improved transparency measures. Support for this sham is worse than no reform . . . it would be thumbing one’s nose at a public which wants and deserves changes in the closed-session bargaining process.”
I also disagree with another conclusion Mr. Paden stated as follows: “In order to implement true openness and transparency, it will be necessary to have our voices heard at the ballot box this November, so we can revisit this ordinance in the future.” Four and a half months prior to the November election we will be debating tonight the merits of our draft C.O.I.N. ordinance. Mr. Paden’s remarks suggest that the proposed ordinance has already been passed by a majority vote of our city council. Like minded associates and I plan to do everything we can at tonight’s council meeting to convince a majority of our council members that a vote for this version of C.O.I.N is not in the best interests of the taxpayers of Fullerton and therefore should be rejected in its current form. This will not be an easy task, but if enough citizens speak out as I have already urged, we can prevail. To accept defeat before we the people of Fullerton have had a chance to fight back espousing the true purpose of the Openness in Labor Negotiations ordinance as written and passed by the Costa Mesa city council last year, in my opinion, is not an option I am willing to even consider.
If we as the loyal opposition to the majority view of our council are just going to roll over and play dead in this instance, then we are not being loyal to our principles nor are we much of an opposition, either.
It is imperative that those who believe in an ethical, honest and transparent city government must never hoist the white flag of defeat before the battle to allow the public an accurate, timely and clear window into the labor negotiating process has even begun. I know I can count on the support of Council member Whitaker. The question remains are there two other council members willing to stand with the people of Fullerton to allow them real transparency and the right to voice their opinions concerning a proposed labor package before our council decides how it is going to spend our money.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there is an election coming up this fall. However, there is much work to be done and much good that we can accomplish before the arrival of that day in November.
#2 by Roger on June 19, 2014 - 10:21 am
Mr. Levinson, your assessment of the ordinance is very exacting and right on the money. What is the next step? What can we do as citizens?