SB 5 impact varies by city

No two cities face the same issues from the new bargaining law.

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By Jeremy P. Kelley, Staff Writer 12:17 AM Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Senate Bill 5 could lead to changes in pay and benefits for city, county and township workers, change the fiscal bottom lines of local governments and alter the way unions and government leaders negotiate to get there.

But there’s disagreement on how big those changes will be, and one of the major issues leading up to the Nov. 8 referendum on the bill is trust, or lack of it.

Many local elected officials and administrators say regardless of whether SB 5 is enacted, they have no plans to cut benefits for government workers.

“Senate Bill 5 says you can get rid of this, this and this ... that’s all well and good, but the idea isn’t to just cut your salaries in half,” Dayton City Manager Tim Riordan said. “I’m not sure people would stay working for me very long, and I’m not sure I could hire good people.”

But We Are Ohio, the organization pushing for repeal of SB 5, has aired commercials suggesting that cities and counties might cut safety forces such as fire department staffing.

Cities, suburbs would face different impact

Senate Bill 5 would affect each local government and its workers differently. The city of Centerville has no union workers and could enact SB 5 changes as it saw fit, while Assistant Montgomery County Administrator Amy Wiedeman said the county has more than half a dozen bargaining units to eventually adjust if the bill is enacted. And many of those unions have differing provisions within their contracts.

Kettering workers pay 17 percent of their health care premium, higher than the SB 5 minimum of 15 percent. While courts may have to decide the definition of health care costs per SB5, workers in Huber Heights (0 percent), and Oakwood and Dayton (10 percent) definitely would pay more under SB 5, and those governments would save money.

“Step raises” based solely on longevity benchmarks would be replaced by a merit pay system to be determined. In Dayton’s public service union, step raises can take a worker from a $27,000 salary at Step 1 to $35,000 by Step 10, or from $40,000 to $54,000. SB 5 also would eliminate the “last-in, first-out system” of layoffs, eliminating another current benefit to seniority.

Will officials be aggressive?

Oakwood is one of the few local jurisdictions to project a dollar amount it might save if Issue 2 passes, estimating $207,000 a year based primarily on a wage freeze, and health care and sick leave savings.

“This bill, or some parts of it, are critical to returning local authority to where it belongs,” Oakwood City Manager Norbert Klopsch said. But Klopsch added that “outstanding public safety” is one of the key services the city provides, and “we would never do anything that would jeopardize that.”

SB 5 would give jurisdictions the ability to save money both within contract negotiations and by taking some things off the bargaining table, but the question is to what extent they would take advantage of that power.

Riordan said all four of Dayton’s union contracts expire between now and next June. For Kettering, it’s all five contracts by next September, meaning the impact of SB 5, or its absence, will be felt quickly.

“We haven’t put a dollar figure on it because there’s so much up in the air,” Riordan said. “If we didn’t have to (negotiate), we could make changes in the health care plan that would save us money. But you’re not only thinking about the budget when you do these things.”

Trust key to unions and governments

Kettering City Manager Mark Schwieterman said the city has “a tremendous amount of respect for our employees” and that won’t change after the Issue 2 vote. He said in an effort to lure the best workers and provide the best service to businesses and residents, the city sometimes chooses to pay a higher wage than another city regardless of the power to pay less.

“We would prefer that be a decision for the local elected officials,” he said.

Kettering City Councilman Ashley Webb wants residents to vote for the bill to limit bargaining, and trust the officials they elect to make good choices.

But Leo Geiger, a city of Dayton sewer worker and union steward, said elected officials already have the flexibility to make those decisions through contract negotiations. And he said a changed bargaining law could have unexpected consequences depending on who’s in office.

“Those people can change every couple of years,” Geiger said. “You might trust the ones that we have in office now, but what if we get somebody who wants to radically change everything? We’ve elected a new governor who has made a lot of very radical changes quickly, including Senate Bill 5.”

If SB 5 fails, pieces of it could be reintroduced

Riordan said many officials wish they could keep specific provisions on collective bargaining from SB 5 and jettison others.

“My sense is that the (existing law) was too restrictive to management, and I think it needed to be changed,” he said. “I think (SB 5) ended up getting punitive to unions, and I didn’t like that part of it.”

But Geiger said state residents should get to vote on the entire bill, just as the legislature did. Schwieterman said if SB 5 is voted down in November, he expects individual pieces of it to be reintroduced in the state legislature next year. Riordan agreed, but said if that’s the case, he hopes the parties spend more time on negotiation before settling on language next year.

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Fourth of five parts: The Dayton Daily News is digging into both sides of the debate on Issue 2 and how it would affect government workers and taxpayers. Today, we take an in-depth look at Senate Bill 5’s impact on local governments. 

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