By Frank Donze
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
New Orleans firefighters got some unexpected good news Monday when a sharply divided Civil Service Commission endorsed a 10 percent pay raise for all fire personnel — a step that Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration strongly opposes.
The commission’s 3-2 vote sends the proposal to the City Council, which has already expressed its support for the idea.
Firefighters, who had been openly pessimistic about their chances of persuading the commission to buck the Nagin administration, were all smiles as they filed out of the jam-packed meeting room.
But in the hallway outside, Fire Fighters Association Local 632 President Nick Felton cautioned his members to temper their enthusiasm until the pay initiative gets the final required approval from the council.
“We just cleared a significant hurdle,” Felton said. “But this dog ain’t finished hunting. We won a battle, but we still have a war left to fight.”
Speaking on Nagin’s behalf, Chief Administrative Officer Brenda Hatfield urged the commission to defer action on the 10 percent raise until the administration has an opportunity to review its impact on the city’s operating budget.
Hatfield reminded the commission that the administration is supporting a $2.1 million appropriation to cover overdue longevity raises for firefighters. She said approving the across-the-board increase would amount to a “double set of raises” for firefighters, an added expense the city cannot afford.
“We must always bear in mind that the administration has an obligation to the citizens of New Orleans to be fiscally responsible, even as we move forward with additional firefighter (pay) increases,” Hatfield said.
The plan backed by the administration calls for increasing the total payroll for the Fire Department by 10 percent, with some firefighters getting as much as a 25 percent raise and some less than 1 percent. Nagin wants all the increases to count against the millions the courts have ordered the city to pay firefighters for state-mandated 2 percent raises that the city’s mayoral administrations failed for years to implement.
Firefighters have balked at Nagin’s plan, saying they should get a 10 percent raise in addition to the annual 2 percent longevity increases they said the city already owed them.
“This pingpong game has got to end,” said Felton, who took issue with Hatfield’s assertion that firefighters were attempting to get a “double pay raise.”
In recent weeks, the city has approved 10 percent raises for workers in all other departments, but Nagin has opposed such a raise for firefighters, citing the automatic 2 percent annual raises that other city workers do not receive.
Monday’s Civil Service Commission vote effectively rejected Nagin’s argument by giving its blessing to the across-the-board raise.
Voting in favor of the firefighter raise were commissioners Terrell Broussard, Dana Douglas and Blaine LeCesne. The proposal was opposed by Chairman William Forrester and Jerry Davis, the lone commission member elected by city workers.
After the vote, Forrester told firefighters crowded into the room that he is not opposed to their getting a raise but that he wanted to give the Nagin administration and the City Council more time to reach a consensus on the issue.
Davis said he, too, sympathizes with firefighters, who studies show are paid less than their counterparts in cities of similar size. But he said New Orleans must address chronic salary inequities in all job classifications.
“No services are dispensable,” he said, adding that “clerks have families, too.”
During the debate, all the parties made repeated references to a court-ordered back-pay settlement with firefighters that threatens to wreak havoc on the city’s fragile post-Katrina finances.
Under the settlement, the city must boost firefighter salaries to a level that reflects the raises they should have received during the many years the city ignored the state mandate. For more than 18 months, the Nagin administration and lawyers for the firefighters union have haggled over details, including how much credit the city should receive for salary adjustments made in recent years.
Civil District Court Judge Kern Reese has ordered the two sides to bring him a plan by Nov. 3 to resolve any lingering disputes.
The firefighters union estimates that the settlement would give veteran firefighters raises ranging from 1 percent to more than 20 percent, going forward. Those raises would add at least $10 million to the $50 million the city now spends annually on firefighter salaries. The Nagin administration wants to settle that matter before the city grants any department-wide raises.
No one has ventured a guess how the administration will deal with the city’s largest obligation to firefighters: an estimated $100 million or more in lump-sum payments, ranging from a few thousand dollars to several hundred thousand dollars that are due to about 1,000 current and retired firefighters or their heirs to cover lost raises going back to 1990.
The City Council voted 5-0 on Oct. 5 to support the double set of firefighter raises. Councilman Oliver Thomas and Councilwoman Shelley Midura did not participate in the vote, but they had earlier indicated their support for the idea.
Before the council could enact the 10 percent pay raise, it first needed Civil Service Commission approval.
Nagin will present his proposed 2007 operating budget to the council next week. Hatfield said Monday that the administration will make its case for deferring the 10 percent raise for firefighters as the council begins its deliberations. By law, the council must approve an operating budget by Dec. 1.