Donna Perry: RI Should Follow The Flanders’ Road Map
Thursday, September 29, 2011
What do pension cutbacks as high as 50%, raising health co-pays, trimming a third of the workforce, consolidating police and fire functions, and eliminating overtime pay add up to these days?
If you have Robert Flanders at the bargaining table, utilizing the powerful negotiation tool of reality and not rhetoric, they may just add up to the turnaround of a broken, bankrupt city.
The five-year fiscal plan for the rescue of Central Falls, which was submitted to the Bankruptcy Court last week by Flanders as the city’s Receiver, could serve as a critically important roadmap that other local deficit ridden and bloated city governments can follow to scale back the unaffordable costs of their local services and governments.
Although the local unions’ predictable antagonistic reception to Flanders’ first round of proposed contract cutbacks and retiree pension reductions grabbed all the headlines in the early going, the Receiver’s process has stayed the course in the wake of the Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing and apparently, hard won successes can now be claimed.
The budget plan Flanders submitted last week, which will be the subject of a public hearing tonight, significantly lowers the city’s unfunded pension liability (from $49 million to $25.7 million); will save $1.3 million by instituting the across the board 20% health co-pays; and finds nearly $700,000 in savings through smarter and strategic consolidation of police and fire dispatching duty and vast reductions in fire department overtime personnel costs.
An Envious Negotiating Achievement
The agreement struck with the city firefighter’s union in reducing the overtime schemed contract provision known as minimum manning, is surely to be viewed as an envious negotiating achievement by the mayors and administrators of other struggling Rhode Island cities and towns. Flanders staff rightly revealed the minimum staffing requirement that nine firefighters be on duty 24/7 (for the one square mile city)forced the constant tapping of an off duty firefighter, resulting in the automatic overtime pay scale. That contract provision, seen in firefighter contracts all across the state, is a significant factor for why Rhode Island, the smallest state, leads the nation in overall fire service costs. Flanders and team found the provision was adding $20,000 a year in added pay, per firefighter, due to the mandatory overtime. The renegotiated agreement scales back the minimum staffing level to a more reasonable seven, resulting in a projected immediate savings of nearly $300,000 in personnel costs.
Although it’s only fair to note the dire fiscal circumstances facing Central Falls, and the prospect that having any pension at all for retirees or any paycheck for current city employees certainly helped keep city unions at the negotiating table, Flanders seems to have achieved the type of concessions, workforce reductions and budgetary overhauls that could serve as a model elsewhere.
As the potential to pare down the cost of retirement of the public sector workforce heads into the spotlight in coming weeks, Flanders work in Central Falls can serve as a critically important reminder that reducing the costs of the current worker contracts goes hand in hand with pension reform if local communities are to truly improve their fiscal outlook.
It is a remarkable achievement that the Central Falls receivership process, as led by Flanders, has transformed a broke and broken community into a blueprint for a city survival story.
One hopes that recognition is evident as the plan winds its way through the court process in the weeks to come.
Donna Perry is a Communications Consultant to RISC, RI Statewide Coalition, www.statewidecoalition.com
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Comments:
Real Clear
8:47am on Thursday, September 29, 2011
Another joker. The State drives the city into the ditch, After all the State has run the schools for decades and the state has capped local property taxes.
Now they send in a lawyer to take away benefits earned by wage earners. While the lawyer's lawyer buddies are racking up huge fees. Which CF taxpayers are expected to pay.
Go back to bed and finish your dream.
Lance Chappell
9:12am on Thursday, September 29, 2011
In the end, I still think we are looking at 35 cents on the dollar for the haircut. Ultimately, the real solution to this would be to merge this 1.29 square mile "city" into Pawtucket with the state providing the "sweetner" by taking over any remaining debt. Central Falls had their hay day with all the mills of the industrial revolution. That was then - today we have a shell of a city with no economy to speak of. You simply cannot expect the taxpayers to continue to shoulder the entire load. The city council were making deals with the unions they knew the taxpayers couldn't afford. The city imploded and others will follow.
Perhaps this is the medicine that Rhode Island needs - downsize, consolidate and merge. We have way too much government for a state of this size. Perhaps the time has come to finally do it. Question is, will the pols continue to play games?
john paycheck
10:18am on Thursday, September 29, 2011
next stop could be woonsocket, pawtucket, west warwick, and providence.
this is not the end. all of these cities have the same problems as central falls. they are buried and cant grow or tax their way out. there is just too much old debt.
none of the above, including providence, are making realy hard cuts. in the political world they are painful, in the business world , they are nothing.
My Opinion
11:13am on Thursday, September 29, 2011
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My Opinion
11:14am on Thursday, September 29, 2011
An achievement?!? Raising city taxes by over 20% over the next four years is an achievement?! Is receivers collecting over $700,000 in fees an achievement as well? If you held Chief Moran up as an example of taking the money, what about yourself?! Selling the community center? Cutting funds to youth programs? And after you do all that, then you go after the money from Wyatt?! Seems a little backwards if you ask me. Good old RI politics covered with the veil of misleading journalism. Choke on your keyboard.
My Opinion
11:25am on Thursday, September 29, 2011
higher taxes = higher rents = no tenants = abandoned houses = foreclosures = even less of a tax base = same hole we are in now... What an achievement!!!!
john paycheck
6:51pm on Thursday, September 29, 2011
so, my opinion, who have you voted for the last 20 years?
and what is your solution?