Getting Sunshine on Public Pay Bargaining in California

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Terry Francke
General Counsel and Founder
Californians Aware

Recently an op ed piece by Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, suggested that the Legislature could help citizens keep public safety (police and fire) employee union pay and benefit agreements in prudent check—and thus reduce the risk of municipal bankruptcies like Vallejo's—by removing some or all of the secrecy that is permitted by the open meeting laws to surround the negotiation of such agreements. As it now stands, he said, the Brown Act, the state's open-meetings law, carves out a huge exception for negotiations with public employee unions. The combined effect of this exception, and separate provisions of the labor code, is to close the door, pull down the shades and turn off the lights on virtually all decisions relating to employee compensation and other terms of union contracts. By the time the public gets to see the compensation provisions, it is already a done deal—indeed, any effort to change the terms likely would be a breach of the contract.

The prescription suggested is to roll up the metaphorical shades in favor of legislatively created sunshine.

Vallejo, whose city council voted May 6 to seek bankruptcy protection, would be the first California municipality to declare bankruptcy in the current economic downturn; others are likely to follow, unfortunately. These debacles are sure to have repercussions in Sacramento, as legislators consider measures to prevent cities from reaching the financial abyss into which Vallejo has fallen. Of all the steps they could take, the most important would be to end the secrecy surrounding public employee contract negotiations.

Although getting more sunshine on bargaining with local public safety employee unions (by amending the Brown Act) would be pretty daunting, since their clout in Sacramento is at least as strong as in any city hall, there are three facts to take into account.

1. There is a precedent and model for creating a window on what agreements are being proposed. It now governs school employee bargaining only, but at least shows how public awareness could be built into the process: