Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara pegged the cost of the retroactive pay raise alone at $600 million.
The executive board of the Fraternal Order of Police has overwhelmingly approved a new eight-year contract, setting the stage for a ratification vote by rank-and-file Chicago police officers in line for a 20% pay raise, more than half of it retroactive.
FOP President John Catanzara pegged the cost of the retroactive pay raise alone at $600 million. The retroactive pay raise for firefighters and paramedics cost taxpayers $96 million, and “we’re three times their size and we got an extra year,” he noted.
“It’s not because we’re taking ’em to the cleaners. It’s because we waited four years for the money,” Catanzara said Monday.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, however, had continued to play cat-and-mouse about the new contract until Monday afternoon, when it was announced by City Hall — after it had been reported by the Sun-Times.
Until then, including on a New York Times podcast, she had refused even to acknowledge the existence of the tentative agreement the FOP board already has approved by a 14-to-1 vote. The union also has received a signed copy from the city and started mailing out copies for the rank-and-file to ratify.
“I think we will ultimately get there. But we’re gonna do it on a timeline that makes sense for our city, for our taxpayers, for the members” of the City Council, Lightfoot had told Kara Swisher on the New York Times’ “Sway” podcast, posted online on Monday.
“We need to make sure that the dollars that they propose make sense. We’ve obviously got to think about what are the revenue sources for that. And we’re fly-specking all of the reform measures that we’ve advocated for to make sure that we’ve gotten everything that I know that we need to be able to move forward. We’re doing our diligence.”
Catanzara said he has no idea how much money, if any, the city has squirreled away for the 10.5% portion of the pay raise that will be retroactive. Lightfoot’s 2021 budget included just $100 million for that purpose.
Asked where the money will come from, Catanzara said it’s not his problem.
“That’s on the mayor and that’s on every single alderman who didn’t pay attention when they passed a budget last October that clearly had only $100 million set aside for police back-pay, which was pretty short-sighted, since the Fire Department got the same amount,” he said.
“They have $900 million from the federal government, at least, out of $2 billion that we’re getting. … I have no idea what the guidelines are” for spending the federal relief money, Catanzara added. “I know it was OK to use to hire police officers. I know it can’t be used for pension obligations. But I don’t know that there’s a prohibition for using it for anything else other than that.”
During landmark debate last week on civilian police oversight, Catanzara told the Sun-Times the new eight-year contract includes a host of accountability reforms Lightfoot has long demanded.
The mayor referred to those disciplinary changes when asked why negotiations have dragged on for years.
“People want reform. They want accountability. So do I. And I’m determined that we’re gonna deliver it. So why this has been protracted is, the FOP president knew that the status-quo that didn’t have the kind of controls around it — that pre-dated my time as mayor — was probably the best contract he was gonna get regarding reform and accountability, because it didn’t really have any measures in it. But that’s not reality,” Lightfoot said.
“Luckily, our state legislature has also upped the ante by mandating certain reform measures as a matter of state law. That can’t be ignored.”
The contract calls for rank-and-file Chicago Police officers to receive a 10.5% retroactive pay raise and 9.5% more through January 2025.
The city has also agreed to increase so-called “duty availability pay” to $950-per-quarter and raise the annual uniform allowance to $1,950.
Duty availability pay will be offered “retroactively” from July 2017 to all officers whose probation period has ended after 18 months. And going forward, duty availability pay will be available after 18 months, instead of after 42 months.
On the health care front, rank-and-file police officers will be asked to absorb “only 50%” of the increase in health care contributions imposed on police sergeants and Chicago firefighters and paramedics. And the “second half” of that increase will be “postponed until July, 1, 2022 to allow members to retire under the current, 2.2% at age 55 and 0% for those 60 and over.”
The contract has two phases.
Phase One, an agreement on officer compensation, also addresses what unpaid FOP negotiator Paul Vallas has called “core accountability issues.” Phase Two will “take much more time to resolve,” presumably because it includes the most controversial disciplinary changes that “may end up in arbitration.”
“The consensus was that it was important to get the financial issues resolved and have accountability provisions that mirrored the city’s agreement with the sergeants, with some clarifications,” Vallas wrote in a Facebook post on negotiations.
Despite the $600 million tab for retro pay alone, Vallas has argued that the contract “should not require an increase in taxes. Nor should it delay the filling of police vacancies in order to have the needed financing.”
from Chicago Sun-Times - All https://ift.tt/2UHZnSj
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