- 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 Anonymous on June 20, 2014 - 2:58 pm
Barry your analysis is very accurate. The ordinance needs to repealed immediately. It is a tragedy that so may people are simply not paying attention to what is going on in their community.