Early voting is
already underway in the City of Richland Hills for the November 4
General Election. On the ballot is Proposition A, which asks:
“Shall the City of Richland Hills
require by ordinance that all police officers and firefighters be
paid no less than the average of all salary and benefits paid to
equivalent positions in the Cities of Fort Worth, North Richland
Hills, Hurst and Haltom City.”
After
due consideration, I am declaring my opposition to this proposition.
The conversation about fair pay for our first responders is vitally
important, and deserves the ongoing attention of the citizens and
City Council in setting budget priorities for our city. Let's have
open, informed consideration and deliberation and hold our elected
officials accountable for the budget decisions they make.
My
opposition is not based on a consideration about the current adequacy
of the first responder pay scale in Richland Hills. I take no position here about whether or not the current pay scale is fair. Rather, my opposition is
entirely predicated on one paramount principle: I am not willing for
our city to legislate away control over a significant portion of our
municipal budget and abdicate budget line items to an index of our
neighboring cities.
With
respect to the citizens who proposed this action, I do not doubt that
they did so with good hearts and noble motivation. I agree with them
that our city is best served by public service officers who are
fairly compensated and have opportunity to develop and advance
professionally while in the employ of Richland Hills. If there are
concerns as to whether we as a city are appropriately compensating
our officers and firefighters, let's have that debate. But let us
not, for expediency sake, turn over the city purse strings to the
fiat of averaging out salaries from neighboring cities.
Surrendering
control of our budget can have unintended long-term, serious,
negative consequences. There are too many variables which can impact
pay scales in other cities which may have no correlation whatsoever
to our city. Much larger cities have different, and often enhanced,
police and fire service needs, driven by such factors such as high
crime rates, high-crime areas, types of commercial and industrial
development and construction, and other community-driven needs which
are unique to those cities. Larger departments may unionize or
engage in collective bargaining. Merely looking at overall
compensation does not take into consideration other factors which
accrue to fair pay considerations. Work schedules, work load,
retirement policies, etc., are equally important in the calculus but
are completely ignored by this proposition, as there is no reasonable
way to quantify these other considerations in dollars.
There
are other variables which may have a negative impact in the future.
For example, consider the recent situation with the City of Dallas
Police Department. Because of mismanagement
of their retirement fund, there was a wave of early retirements
by officers trying to maximize their retirement benefits. This
created a staffing vacuum which has required Dallas to revisit
police compensation. Were this to happen in Fort Worth or one of our other neighbors and
Richland Hills pay was indexed to them, our city would have to make
budget adjustments simply because our neighbor failed to take care of
their own business.
Under
this proposition, every budgetary deliberation in Fort Worth, Haltom
City, Hurst, and North Richland Hills becomes material to our city's
budget, but we have no voice. In essence, we're declaring “you
other cities do what you want with police and firefighter pay, and
once you figure it out, let us see the figures so we can calculate
what it means to our budget.” That, my dear citizens, is the
antithesis of good government and representative democracy.
Advocate
for our first responders and hold our council accountable to see that
they are paid fairly. But don't give away budgetary control of this
line item to our neighbors. Vote “Against” Proposition A.
There's a more excellent way to handle our municipal finances.
