Politics Trumps Policy With Passage of Fire Department Staffing Bill

Sometimes policy takes a backseat to politics in the legislative process. This usually happens when legislators want to advance legislation to either bolster their re-elections or reward loyal political supporters. 

We saw an example of "politics trumping policy" to appease a powerful political ally last week when the Illinois Senate sided with the statewide firefighter union to advance a bill proposing an expansion of collective bargaining rights to allow firefighters to bargain over fire department staffing levels. 

The bill represents a substantial change to labor law because it makes negotiation over staffing levels a mandatory subject of bargaining in all unionized fire departments. 

Not to get overly wonky, but Illinois law essentially puts cities into two camps with respect to mandatory bargaining over staffing levels. 

The first camp includes cities that have already agreed to bargain over staffing levels and have such provisions in their labor contacts. These cities are mandated to continue to bargain over staffing levels with their unions. 

The second camp includes cities that do not presently have staffing provisions within their firefighter labor contracts. Negotiations over staffing levels are considered to be a "permissive" subject of bargaining in these cities. This means that the cities can discuss staffing levels with their unions, but the unions can't force the issue before an arbitrator if there is a disagreement. This reality is supported by numerous arbitration and Illinois Labor Relations Board decisions. 

Which brings us to why the firefighter union introduced HB 5485.

The bill would eliminate this distinction and allow firefighter unions to take staffing level decisions to interest arbitration in any city if the parties reach impasse. Consequently, third party arbitrators with no knowledge of fire science would have more power to make staffing level decisions than the elected leaders of a community.

Cities with unionized fire departments stood in vehement opposition to this bill. They were joined in their opposition by newspapers and editorial boards around the state: 

Examples of statewide editorial opinion against HB 5485.

Some of these editorials successfully shined a spotlight on the bill last spring. The resulting attention influenced bill proponents to avoid calling the bill in the Senate prior to the November election. The bill had already passed the House with a narrow majority last spring. 

Why was the bill so unpopular with cities? Two reasons. First, it was the latest proposal out of Springfield to curtail the authority of locally-elected officials. Second, and more importantly, the bill allows fire unions a major say in something that has been a managerial right because it pertains to "standards of service." 

There is a direct correlation between service standards and budgetary resources. So, if an arbitrator determines that a city must hire one additional firefighter per shift for a community with three fire stations, then the community would need to hire nine additional firefighters to cover each shift. If it costs that community $100 thousand per firefighter for wages and benefits, then the city has just assumed a new funding obligation of about one million dollars. This obligation grows each year with wage and health insurance cost increases.

And then there's the flipside. Because the arbitrator would have to approve any staffing reductions when revenues decline, it would become exceedingly difficult to reduce headcount to reflect fiscal realities. Taxes would need to be increased, or services would need to be disproportionately reduced among other departments (i.e., police). 

Another example of the cost impact of obligatory staffing levels can be seen in my hometown of Oak Lawn. Under existing law, cities that have staffing level provisions in their labor contracts must continue to bargain over staffing.  Oak Lawn agreed to include a staffing provision years ago and is now stuck with it. The taxpayers of Oak Lawn are obligated to pay $2 million per year in overtime costs because the Village is contractually obligated to maintain staffing levels. The Village wants out from under this expensive staffing requirement, but the union and arbitrators won't budge. 

But these are policy issues and I want to get back to motivation and process factors because these are what ultimately carried the day.

Because the stakes were high, cities poured their efforts into an organized campaign to stop the bill during the Veto Session. This included another round of opposition editorials and stories. 

Mayors held a Springfield press conference to rally public opposition to HB 5485.

Cities reached out to their Senators to urge that they vote against the bill. Some even did so publicly: 

Unfortunately, the Senator didn't heed the request of the mayor of his largest city and voted for the bill.

With the election a thing of the past, the bill was assigned to the Senate Executive Committee for a November 19 hearing. This was probably the first indication that the skids were likely greased to advance the bill.  The Senate Executive Committee is tightly-controlled by Senate Leadership. Union-supported bills aren't assigned to Senate Executive Committee to die.

Cities relied primarily on the testimony of a highly-respected labor attorney in an effort to derail the bill in the Executive Committee. But, as I indicated, union-supported bills don't go to the Executive Committee to die. The bill was approved 9-2-3 and advanced to the Senate Floor. 

Labor attorney Ben Gehrt testified against HB 5485 before the Senate Executive Committee.

Want proof that pressure was brought to bear on legislators to support this bill? Without mentioning names, one of the Democratic Senators on the Executive Committee had committed to a mayor that he would oppose the bill. Immediately before the hearing began, that Senator entered the public gallery to seek out the mayor to tell him that he had to change his vote and support the bill. Hey, at least he told him before the vote. That does count for something in this business.

For procedural reasons the proponents weren't able to call the bill for final Senate passage until the day after the Senate Executive Committee hearing. During debate, Senator Pam Althoff (R-McHenry) urged her Senate colleagues to hold the bill until a compromise could be fully explored that might mitigate opposition from the cities. A compromise amendment had already been offered and summarily rejected, by the way. Bill supporters, particularly the statewide firefighter union, weren't interested in waiting when they were a Senate vote away from sending the bill to the Governor. And they knew that they likely had the votes.

Senators debating HB 5485 on the Senate Floor. Senator Pam Althoff is standing at left. The sponsor, Senator John Mulroe, is standing in the back row to the right of the doors.

Proponents unveiled some dubious arguments in favor of passing the bill during debate in the Executive Committee and on the Senate Floor. For example, that the bill would somehow cap litigation costs (it won't) and only clarifies existing law (it changes existing law). They even argued that a 2011 appellate court case determined outright that staffing was a mandatory subject of bargaining (it didn't) only to later argue the reverse position by positing that the case actually undermined the law (that was a real head-spinner!). But, whatever, they wanted to pass their bill pretty badly. Rich Miller summed it up perfectly in his post about the staffing bill over at the Capitol Fax blog:

Indeed.

To increase the likelihood that the votes would be there to pass the bill, proponents indicated their intention to pass a "trailer" bill in the spring to try and address some of the objections raised by opponents. While there may in fact be such a bill, offering to address issues only after the bill becomes law is a fairly common legislative tactic used to provide some cover to convince fence-sitters to support a bill. In this instance, they can vote for the bill and tell their mayors that they did so because they were assured that the concerns of the mayors would be addressed later.

A "trailer bill" may in fact occur, but the mayors now have no leverage to extract anything of real value because the firefighter union and its supporters already got what they wanted. Why give anything of value back after you've already won?

The bill passed 42-11-4. It needed a super-majority of 36 votes to pass because it had an immediate effective date and the vote occurred after May 31. A simply majority is needed between January and June. 

I'm almost certain that a few Senators voted for the bill once it became obvious that it would get the required 36 votes. These Senators will go back to their mayors and tell them that they made a tactical vote to join the prevailing side, but wouldn't have been the "36th vote." And that's probably the case. 

The bill still has to be signed into law by the Governor, but Governor Quinn is a strong supporter of the firefighter union and is likely to sign the bill.

And that's what happens when politics takes priority over good public policy. 

Related Posts:
The Anatomy of a Spin Job
The Evolution of the Fire Service in Three Graphs

Is Illinois' Fire Service Economically Viable?

Media:
Daily Herald: Sinister Signals: Lawmakers Show Their Loyalties with Vote on Union Staffing Bill